Forta to Decentralize Node Running and Add Multi-chain Support

Forta is onboarding additional node operators as the Network continues to decentralize. Forta is also expanding its monitoring coverage beyond Ethereum – with support for Avalanche, Polygon and BSC launching in early February.

Decentralized Node Running

Although Forta has been operating for six months, users have been relying on a limited number of nodes to run their detection bots and emit alerts. Operating a small network of nodes was helpful early on to make maintenance and updates easier, but the goal of Forta has always been to provide decentralized, permissionless infrastructure any team or developer can use to monitor smart contracts.

Today, Forta is excited to announce it has begun onboarding a new group of node operators. The new node operators are geographically distributed and committed to Forta’s mission to secure Defi and Web3.

Decentralized node infrastructure is important for two reasons. First, it eliminates centralized points of failure. This is a crucial feature for a network that could secure potentially trillions of dollars of assets and transaction activity. Second, it ensures the integrity of the network. Having each detection bot run by multiple node operators creates a higher degree of confidence in alerts, and makes it harder to suppress good alerts.

For the engineers and protocol teams using Forta, more decentralized node infrastructure won’t change your user experience. The only difference is your detection bots will be run by a larger pool of node operators.

For the time being, new node runners will only scan Ethereum mainnet, but keep reading below for an update on multi-chain support.

This is an exciting first step to supporting fully permissionless node running. Stay tuned for more updates!

Multi-chain support

Forta focused on Ethereum initially because it represents 62% of DeFi TVL. However, a majority of the protocols using Forta are now multichain. This makes runtime security more challenging because users need to monitor contracts and transaction activity across multiple blockchains. It also means their monitoring solution needs to be flexible enough to support them regardless of chain.

Today, Forta revealed it is expanding support to include Avalanche and Polygon. After listening to feedback from the community, these chains were added based on ease of integration, developer activity and total value locked.

Both ecosystems have experienced tremendous growth over the last year. Avalanche boasts an ecosystem of 130+ dapps with a combined $11B in TVL. Polygon has an ecosystem of 160+ dapps with a combined $5B in TVL. The addition of these networks will expand Forta’s footprint across the L1 and L2 landscape and offer more teams, developers and protocols access to a decentralized layer for smart contract monitoring.

Forta plans to scale node infrastructure for Avalanche, Polygon and BSC the same way it scaled nodes for Ethereum. A closed group of trusted community members will run initial node operators, and additional nodes will be added over time. By the end of Q1, there will be a decentralized pool of Forta nodes scanning Ethereum mainnet, as well as separate decentralized pools each scanning Avalanche, Polygon and BSC.

Support for other EVM compatible chains, including Fantom, Arbitrum and Optimism are on the horizon. Order of priority will be based on user demand. If your team needs Forta to support a specific chain, reach out and let us know!

Forta will be releasing further updates, additional information and documentation over the next few weeks and feedback and involvement from our community is always encouraged. 

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