Free and high quality RPC services are essential to our ecosystem as they provide a standardized and convenient way for developers and external applications to interact with Moonriver, Moonbeam and Moonbase Alpha networks.
Given the rather nascent nature of the Moonbeam and Moonriver networks, the availability of free, public API endpoints removes a key barrier to entry for developers wishing to experiment with and deploy to the ecosystem.
While having a diverse set of RPC providers ensures a healthy degree of decentralization, providing that RPC infrastructure does comes at a real financial cost. Thus, it is important to achieve a high degree of service quality while balancing the number of service providers with costs of these services to the treasury.
For Q1 of 2024 two treasury proposals of our valued RPC service providers, namely UnitedBlock and Blast, were approved by the Treasury Council. These proposals were to cover the costs of running RPC infrastructure and provide related services during that period of time.
As previously mentioned, the Treasury Council has decided to call all RPC service providers to request funding in their proposals on a half-year basis with a pay-out in full prior to the start of the period of services The upcoming funding period is now Q2 & Q3 of 2024.
All historically funded RPC service providers as well as any new ones are very welcome to put forward their proposals.
As with previous proposals, these should be outlining core services to be provided along with estimates of volumes and costs. Proposals should be submitted PRIOR to FEBRUARY 29th, 11:59 PM UTC, little over two weeks time from now.
For proposals in the above time period we would kindly ask all proposers to include the eth_getLogs RPC Method in their offer of services as well as the operation / provisioning of bootnodes on all three networks.
The purpose of this is to ensure a more open and equitable process for all interested parties by creating a period of time when submissions will be considered. The idea is to repeat this consideration period on a quarterly or bi-annual basis. This in turn will help set expectations on all sides — selected service providers can be reasonably confident they will be reimbursed for costs related to providing the service. Meanwhile, the Treasury Council will have more predictability and a better view into longer term treasury spend.
Following the submission period, the Treasury Council will review all proposals and circle back with any questions or clarifications needed before finally indicating support or non-support for each proposal.
As in previous terms, RPC service providers will be evaluated internally by the Treasury Council. Generally speaking the criteria for proposals are based on:
- Cost of delivering the service
- Quality of service
- Decentralization / redundancy / location
- Track record providing high quality RPC services to blockchains in a variety of ecosystems
- Consistent track record of cost optimization while maintaining a high quality of service
- Contributions to the ecosystem to date
- Adherence to the Moonbeam Code of Conduct
- For incumbents, disruption costs if service were to be curtailed
- Trace & Trace API service provision
- Inclusion of
eth_getLogsRPC method
We would encourage all proposing parties to use the 30D TWAP for both GLMR and MOVR to USD conversion in their funding requests and have their total amount requested split up between GLMR and MOVR tokens following the newly adopted 60/40 rule in terms of GLMR/MOVR ratio per USD requested.
We the @TreasuryCouncil are again greatly looking forward to reading your proposals! 
Yaron
PS: To whom it may concern 
@blackk_magiik from UnitedBlock
@Mihai_BwareLabs from Blast
@benn_69 from Dwellir
@brittanyseales from Onfinality
& everyone else is most welcome, too!
