I have been reading about what RPC exactly is and why it has been appearing so much in technical discussions lately. It turns out to be much more important than most people think.

Basically, RPC (Remote Procedure Call) is the protocol that allows one program to request help from another on a different computer in the network, without needing to understand all the technical details of how the network works. It sounds simple, but it is the foundation of almost everything we use today.

What’s interesting is that this has been with us for decades. Bruce Jay Nelson formalized the concept back in 1981, and since then it has constantly evolved. It went through Microsoft’s DCOM, Sun RPC, and more recently Google launched gRPC, which significantly changed the game with HTTP/2 as its base.

In practice, you see RPC everywhere. Financial systems use it to synchronize transactions between databases in different locations. Telecommunications rely on it to manage remote networks. Even in telemedicine, it allows doctors to securely access patient data from anywhere.

What really caught my attention is how RPC has become fundamental to blockchain. JSON-RPC specifically is what enables network nodes to communicate with each other, and it is crucial for decentralized applications to function. Any trading platform or exchange needs to use RPC to query blockchain data in real time, execute smart contracts, and keep data sources updated.

With the rise of cloud computing and microservices, RPC has gained even more relevance. It enables the creation of systems that are truly scalable and flexible, capable of handling the demands of today’s digital world. Google and Microsoft use it extensively in their global data centers so that different services can communicate seamlessly.

The current trend is toward more efficient and secure implementations. Google’s gRPC is probably the best example of this, with features like streaming and language-agnosticism that are essential for modern applications. And in blockchain, JSON-RPC continues to evolve to support increasingly complex architectures.

Understanding what RPC is and how it really works helps you grasp why certain systems are faster or more reliable than others. It’s one of those fundamental technologies that most people use without thinking much about it, but that makes the entire distributed infrastructure we know possible.