How To Setup An Alchemy Solana RPC Endpoint For Your Dapp

Popular Ethereum Web3 Infrastructure Provider Expands To Solana

Alchemy, one of the most popular Web3 development platforms and infrastructure providers for Ethereum, now offers infrastructure services for Solana. Developers can access the Alchemy Supernode API which supports Solana JSON RPC methods. Alchemy's Supernode provides developers terrific reliability, data correctness, and scalability.

Alchemy helps Web3 developers build scalable decentralized applications without the hassle of managing blockchain infrastructure. Alchemy offers one of the highest-performance and most reliable infrastructures, making it easy for blockchain developers to interact with Solana without the hassle of managing RPC nodes and validators. Solana testing shows Alchemy uptime is 99.9%, which makes it among the best performing Solana RPC infrastructure options. Alchemy also supports other blockchains including Ethereum, Polygon, Arbitrum, Optimism, Astar, StarkNet, Flow, and Crypto.org.

“Everyone's looking for a way to get involved in the space, and what they realized was Alchemy is the backbone for all of these things,” said Alchemy Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer Joe Lau during an interview with CNBC. “We still think this is the first inning of Web 3.”

Alchemy was founded in 2017 by Nikil Viswanathan and Joseph Lau, both graduates of Stanford University who had both previously worked in computer science and engineering at technology companies including Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Pinterest, Google, and LinkedIn. Alchemy launched publicly in August 2020, and it was recently valued above $10 billion.

Avana Wallet uses Alchemy as one of its core Solana RPC service providers. Our developers have experience building with Alchemy on Ethereum. We are very happy with Alchemy's speed, performance, and reliability. Setting up a dedicated Alchemy Solana RPC endpoint takes less than 5 minutes. The developer dashboard is intuitive and easy to use. Many other Web3 companies use Alchemy services such as OpenSea, Rarity Sniper, Circle, ChainLink, Ledger, Meta, Shopify, Nifty Gateway, and more.

Alchemy Solana RPC Developer Dashboard

Alchemy formally launched its Solana RPC services in June 2022 (the day after the entire Solana network went down). Alchemy has worked with the Solana Labs team to ensure a smooth roll-out. Alchemy is offering the first 500 developer teams free access to Solana RPC services during 2022.

"🎉 🎉 We’re officially supporting @solana🎉 🎉

Solana devs: start building with Alchemy. Get reliability and scale.

Alchemy devs: start building on Solana. Get speed and affordability.

Everyone: here's why it's a game-changer 👇

Alchemy’s mission is to bring web3 to billions of people around the world by making it easy for any developer, anywhere, to build on blockchain.

Supporting @solana, takes us a huge step forward.

Sign up now for early access

The @solana benefits are real:

✅ high throughput

✅ affordable transactions

✅ fast block times

@solana benefits, coupled with @AlchemyPlatform's reliability make this a game changer.

- @AlchemyPlatform, June 2, 2022

Building On Alchemy Is Easy

Alchemy enables developers to focus on building rather than maintaining Solana infrastructure. Scaling Solana infrastructure can be complicated, and increasing the number of RPC nodes usually increases the number of data errors and technical support required (TLDR scaling is not easy). Alchemy takes care of infrastructure scaling so developers can focus on building their apps.

Source: Alchemy

Alchemy manages a globally-distributed network of highly-available Solana RPC nodes. Every request sent to an Alchemy API endpoint is intelligently routed to the nearest RPC node to ensure the lowest latency. Alchemy uses a host of internal monitoring systems make sure all nodes in the network are healthy. Alchemy features auto-scaling capabilities to meet virtually any volume, on-demand.

"Alchemy has been crucial in helping us build and debug our global marketplace. The Alchemy team is stellar, and we're super excited about all of the tools they've been releasing."

- Devin Finzer, Co-Founder & CEO of OpenSea

Diagram of Alchemy's RPC infrastructure

Source: Alchemy.

Getting Started With Alchemy Solana RPC Services

1. Create An Alchemy Account ($100 in free credits 🚀)

Creating an account is fast and free. You can sign up with this link and get $100 in free credits.

2. Create Your Alchemy Solana RPC App

Create an app for Solana Mainnet. You can create multiple apps if you also want to have RPC endpoints for Solana Testnet and Solana Devnet.

3. Retrieve Your Alchemy Solana RPC API Key

Retrieve your app's API keys - you most likely will need the HTTPS key if you are working with a JavaScript app. Always keep this key secret, and never publish it to a public GitHub repository.

4. Restrict Access To Alchemy Solana RPC Key

Alchemy enables you to restrict access to your Solana RPC endpoint. For instance, you can specify a website or IP address that is able to use the key. We highly recommend restricting access to your API key to prevent unauthorized use. Many React apps leak API keys unintentionally.

5. Add To Your App

You can use your Alchemy HTTPS API key with the Solana Web3 JavaScript API. If you are new to Solana web development, we recommend checking out the Solana Cookbook.

How Much Do Alchemy Solana RPC Services Cost?

Alchemy currently has two plans. Neither plan implements a daily limit. The Free plan includes up to 300,000,000 compute units/mo. The Build Plan ($49/mo) includes up to 400,000 compute units/mo and auto-scales beyond that threshold. The Build plan has 2x higher throughput and is recommended for apps in production.

Alchemy's plans include 24/7 free Discord support. The support is very helpful and responsive.

What is an RPC node on Solana?

RPC is an acronym for Remote Procedure Call, which is a software communication protocol that enables programs to communicate with each other. Solana RPC requests are an application's gateway to the Solana network. RPC requests are serviced RPC Nodes such as Alchemy's services. It is important to have RPC infrastructure that is reliable and fast - slow RPC services can degrade user experience and your application's performance.

Solana manages a list of RPC providers in addition to Alchemy.

Diagram Of How Solana RPC Services Work

Source: Solana

Resources

Alchemy SDK Quickstart for Solana
Solana ecosystem
Alchemy announcement