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Networks

Networks are decentralized infrastructure services that utilize Ethereum's shared security to reward Operators for providing it. Various high-trust models in distributed systems and dapps can be built on top of this infrastructure.

Trust Inheritance​

Network can select specific types of trust or combinations of them, which will be programmatically inherited and used in your protocol:

  • Economics: Measured by financial stake, economic trust relies on capital-backed commitments. It ensures rational behavior through objective validation semantics, where any malicious actions can be proven on-chain and penalized. Examples: Optimistic claims, light client bridges.
  • Decentralization: Measured by the number of independent nodes, decentralized trust relies on a large and distributed validator set to prevent collusion. This is valuable for Networks with failure modes that are not easily provable on-chain. Examples: Multiparty computation, data availability layers.
  • Ethereum: Measured by the percentage of Ethereum validators involved, inclusion trust allows for experimenting with additional opt-in features to the Ethereum protocol without modifying its core. This enables combining different trust models. Examples: MEV management, single-slot finality.

Why Build a Network​

For new protocols, bootstrapping a network usually requires establishing relationships with multiple Operators, which can be time-consuming and difficult in a startup environment. Fluctuating native token prices can also lead to insufficient capital.

For established protocols, there may be a lack of economic security or decentralization to reliably serve specific use cases. They may also be looking to retain their operators with higher rewards, or simply get more traction as a project.

Key Benefits​

With Nektar, you can quickly rent as much compute power as needed, secured with repurposed collateral. This allows you to establish your own decentralized set of nodes within any type of blockchain or distributed network.

This approach benefits your users as well. Nektar’s ability to leverage Ethereum's economic guarantees reduces security risks for dapps by minimizing middleware dependencies and lowering the cost of corruption.