I had the pleasure of joining the discussion about light nodes integrated into wallets hosted by Stefan Sopic from Parity Technologies.

Many web3 folks are not quite aware that things are pretty centralised in our decentralised world.

MetaMask blocked certain countries

Decentralisation in reality

MetaMask, behind the scenes, is using Infura infrastructure.

Stefan made a solid point that the focal point of all the requests* MetaMask handles is in fact based on the East Coast, USA, through the same blockchain node provider.

If that particular provider happens to experience some issues, users would find themselves unable to use the network 🀯

By mapping out the requests, it makes it possible to create a connection between IP addresses and multiple wallets (given the fact that MetaMask recently announced IP address collection) πŸ€”

Usage of Infura in Metamask

Path to decentralisation

Parity is developing substrate_connect.

They enable running a light node for each individual user, therefore preventing a central point of failure.

substrate_connect

Kudos to Parity - for developing both decentralised and more private network πŸ‘

*𝘢𝘯𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘡𝘩𝘦 𝘦𝘯π˜₯-𝘢𝘴𝘦𝘳 𝘰𝘱𝘡𝘴 𝘡𝘰 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘷π˜ͺπ˜₯𝘦 𝘡𝘩𝘦π˜ͺ𝘳 𝘰𝘸𝘯 𝘣𝘭𝘰𝘀𝘬𝘀𝘩𝘒π˜ͺ𝘯 𝘯𝘰π˜₯𝘦