What is DeServe
DeServe is a progressively decentralized infrastructure services network, launched on Polkadot March 31, 2026. Its initial deployment provides a global archive RPC network for Polkadot Asset Hub with Ethereum-compatible RPC support, and Polkadot Coretime, across 14 locations and 6 continents, with a 15th location in Tokyo currently being deployed. Coverage is expanding to additional Polkadot system parachains, with Coretime currently rolling out.
The launch of DeServe is motivated by three major factors:
- The unmet demand for general-purpose infrastructure in the ecosystem such as web hosting, VMs, and CPU/GPU compute services.
- The lack of pay-as-you-go, cost-competitive alternatives for these services.
- The absence of a Polkadot-based DePIN capable of both meeting these needs, exporting services to other blockchain ecosystems and to institutional and individual end-users.
Early traction
Since its launch, DeServe has grown rapidly from 1.7M requests/day on launch to over 4.5M/day by day 3, reaching 50M+ requests/24h within the first week.
How it works
Requests are routed to the nearest available node via geo-steered load balancing, based on the client's IP address. Endpoint health is monitored every 15 seconds, and unreachable nodes are immediately removed from the pool, ensuring high availability. Live node status and performance data are available on the deserve.network dashboard.
Performance & cost
DeServe has the lowest latency among all major Polkadot RPC providers, verified via Compare Nodes benchmarks run against IBP (run #1, run #2, run #3), Dwellir (run #1), OnFinality (run #1), and LuckyFriday (run #1).
DeServe is faster in 6/6 continents and over 24/26 regions compared to OnFinality, LuckyFriday, and Dwellir, and in 5/6 continents and over 18/26 regions compared to IBP.
DeServe is also approximately 80% cheaper than IBP across comparable infrastructure.
Decentralization roadmap
DeServe is founded and launched by Helikon, an İstanbul-based Polkadot-native infrastructure and software development team. Its initial deployment spans 14 locations across 7 providers, with cloud infrastructure progressively being replaced by native Polkadot operators.
The network decentralizes progressively through defined phases:
- Alpha: Helikon operates as the initial operator, managing the network and coordinating providers.
- Beta: A network committee of 3 Polkadot-native infrastructure operators takes over coordination.
- On-chain: Governance, provider coordination, and pay-as-you-go payments with on-chain provision and consumption proofs move fully on-chain.
A testnet is already deployed on Paseo (para ID 5150). Planned milestones include a transition to open-source DNS (replacing Cloudflare for geo-steered load balancing) and progressive replacement of cloud providers with native Polkadot infrastructure providers.