Conduit Explained

What is Conduit?

Conduit is a blockchain infrastructure platform that simplifies the deployment of rollups through its Rollups-as-a-Service (RaaS) offering. With Conduit, users can deploy production-grade OP Chains, based on the OP Stack on Ethereum, in minutes without needing any code.

Conduit's infrastructure includes comprehensive support features such as logs, monitoring, and access to a Blockscout explorer (tool for inspecting and analyzing EVM-based blockchains), ensuring a seamless and efficient deployment experience.

The platform streamlines the development process by handling scalability, reliability, and upgrades, allowing developers to focus on building the best user experience for their applications.

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Key Features

Conduit powers more than 30% of mainnet rollups, working closely with Optimism on the Superchain and Arbitrum on Orbit, and serving 15 billion RPC requests per day. Conduit's key features include:

• Rollup Deployment: Users can deploy L2 or L3 rollups in minutes through the Conduit app with no coding required. Sign in, select your stack, choose between Testnet or Mainnet, add billing details, and deploy with a monthly fee per deployment.
• OP Stack Support: Offers 10-100x cheaper fees, trustless bridging, Ethereum equivalence, and improved node performance for thousands of transactions per second.
• Arbitrum Nitro Support: Provides dedicated computing, cheaper fees, trustless bridging, close Ethereum compatibility, and Stylus for smart contract development in languages like Rust and C++.
• Conduit Nodes: High-performance RPCs available without needing to run your own node. Ensures guaranteed uptime with redundancy, autoscaling with transaction volume, secured infrastructure, and usage tracking via the Conduit app dashboard.
• API Access: Obtain an API key to send requests to Conduit rollup RPC endpoints. Compute Units (CUs) measure resource usage for transparent pricing. Free Plan includes 400M CUs/month; Pro Plan includes 1B CUs/month and additional features.
• Pricing & Costs: Testnet deployment at $50/month with 400M CU base limit; Mainnet deployment from $3,000/month + 7.5% sequencer profit with 1B CU base limit; Starter nodes plan free with 400M CUs; Pro nodes plan at $50/month with 1B CUs and autoscaling at $0.10/1M CUs.

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Conduit Use Cases

Working with innovative teams like Mode, Aevo, Zora, and Friend.tech, Conduit continues to lead advancements in affordable, high-throughput Layer 3 solutions.

• Decentralized Exchanges: Platforms like Aevo and Lyra leverage Conduit to provide DEX experiences with the speed of centralized order books.
• Consumer Apps: Applications such as Friend.tech and Degen Chain use Conduit to bring Web 2 social experiences to the crypto space.
• DeFi Ecosystems: Mode utilizes Conduit to ensure high throughput, enabling dApps to handle congestion-heavy events like airdrops seamlessly.
• Settlement Layers: Orderly Network employs Conduit to pioneer new onchain clearinghouse models that demand massive data throughput.
• NFT Ecosystems: Zora uses Conduit to simplify and reduce the cost of minting NFTs, providing creators with new monetization opportunities.

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Conduit Founder

Conduit was founded by Andrew Huang who brings a wealth of experience from his background as a backend engineer at notable companies such as X, Pinterest, Wish, and Quill. His time at Wish, a fast-growing company with significant infrastructure demands, provided him with valuable insights into scalable systems and user acquisition strategies.

Prior to founding Conduit, Andrew spent eight weeks as an entrepreneur in residence at Paradigm, a venture firm co-founded by his brother, Matt Huang. Conduit's first product, created in collaboration with Optimism, underscores Andrew's vision of simplifying blockchain deployment for developers.

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What is a Rollups-as-a-Service (RaaS)

Rollup-as-a-Service (RaaS) is a product for launching new application-specific Layer 2 or Layer 3 rollups. The offering is similar to a software-as-a-service product in that the user is not required to maintain or host any aspect of the service offering, freeing them from complex software and hardware management.

A rollup-as-a-service product provides developers with either SDKs or a dashboard from which to launch application-specific rollups. Developers won't have to worry about finding nodes to run the rollup, nor will they have to build or maintain any code. Popular RaaS's are AltLayer and Conduit.

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Backing and Funding

With the recent $37 million Series A funding round led by Haun Ventures and Paradigm, as well as contributions from Robot Ventures, Credibly Neutral, Coinbase Ventures, Bankless Ventures, Conduit has raised a total of $44 million. In an effort to make onchain computing as accessible as cloud computing, the funds raised will be utilized to create dependable and configurable rollups.

Paradigm’s Georgios Konstantopoulos and Haun's Chris Ahn will join Conduit's board of directors, guiding the firm as it continues to innovate in the blockchain space.

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Bottom Line

Conduit is a Rollups-as-a-Service platform that hosts one-third of all Ethereum blockchain rollups. The platform caters to a diverse range of users, including DeFi protocols, game companies, and NFT platforms, enabling them to deploy rollups in less than 15 minutes.

By providing comprehensive infrastructure and support, Conduit helps developers overcome scalability challenges and focus on building robust blockchain applications.