Cloudflare Provides Public Access to its Ethereum and IPFS Gateways

Web infrastructure platform Cloudflare has announced supporting the development and deployment of Ethereum for its customer through its Ethereum and IPFS gateways. From now on, Cloudflare customers can log into the dashboard and configure a zone for Ethereum, the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS), or both.

Ethereum Gateway

As one of the fast-growing data storage firms, Cloudflare positions itself as an underlying web infrastructure that powers a range of blockchain-based applications.

Cloudflare’s Ethereum Gateway lets users read and write access to the ETH network without installing any software on their computers. In particular, they can read and access all information that the existing nodes on the blockchain have validated without barriers.

According to the company’s recent blog post, it has created a new API with end-to-end managed hostname deployment, ensuring that the creation and management of gateways remain speedy and frictionless.

One of the striking features, as described, is that a new testnet support is installed to “ensure new development can be easily tested, hardened, and deployed to the mainnet without incurring additional risks to the blockchain network.“

To further demonstrate its infrastructural support to web3 applications, the post outlined that DeFi protocols can use the Cloudflare IPFS gateway to serve their front-end web applications. Additionally, NFT designers can use the Ethereum Gateway to drop new offerings and the IPFS gateway to store the digital assets in a decentralized system.

Also, Dapps, with a high volume of traffic, can use its service to avoid web congestion.

Cloudflare Supports Ethereum’s PoS Transition

Cloudflare also cited Ethereum’s upcoming transition to Proof of State through “the Merge” as a critical moment for solving the “scale and environmental challenges that face blockchain technologies today.” The company stated it will continue to support Ethereum’s PoS transition.

“Over the next few months, Cloudflare will launch, and fully stake, Ethereum validator nodes on the Cloudflare global network as the community approaches its transition from Proof of Work to Proof of Stake with ‘The Merge.’ These nodes will serve as a testing ground for research on energy efficiency, consistency management, and network speed.”

By running Proof of Stake validator nodes on its network, Cloudflare confirms that it has not and will not run Proof of Work infrastructure.