Question 1

What are Lava Network and LAVA?

Accepted Answer

Lava Network is a network that provides decentralized API services for blockchain data access. Consumers purchase subscriptions to obtain API access, providers run endpoints and deliver services, and LAVA is used for staking, service incentives, and network participation. It does not directly replace the blockchains being accessed: Lava's role is to organize who can provide data services, how consumers obtain services, and how rewards are settled based on verifiable usage.

Question 2

What roles does LAVA play in the network?

Accepted Answer

LAVA is used both to secure the network and coordinate data services. Validators stake LAVA to participate in block production and transaction validation; providers stake LAVA, choose the API specifications they serve, and establish endpoints; delegators can delegate to validators or providers to participate in the corresponding reward distribution. Purchasing a subscription does not mean that the entire subscription fee is paid directly to one endpoint. A subscription first defines the available services and usage conditions, after which the protocol distributes the relevant portions among providers, validators, contributors, and delegators according to valid service and settlement rules.

Question 3

What is LAVA dual staking?

Accepted Answer

Dual staking means that the staking or delegation of the same LAVA can be associated simultaneously with both validator and provider roles. Thus, the same tokens are exposed to risks on both the consensus-security and service-supply sides and can participate in rewards from both sides. Its purpose is to avoid a severe imbalance between the staking sizes of validator and provider pools. When staking from the provider side, a validator must also be selected; when delegating from the validator side, a provider may initially be left unselected, in which case the tokens remain in the “empty_provider” state and a provider delegation can be added later. A provider's effective stake is also affected by its commission and delegation cap, so staking does not necessarily result in the same return.

Question 4

How do consumers obtain API services, and how are providers selected?

Accepted Answer

Consumers first purchase subscription plans defined by governance; plans specify limits such as available usage within a given period, the number of providers, geographic locations, or additional features. A subscription can create projects that allocate usage rights to developers or applications. Within each epoch, the protocol pseudo-randomly pairs consumers and providers based on factors including provider stake, geographic location, service-quality metrics, supported add-ons, and consumer parameters. Only paired providers are eligible to claim rewards for serving that consumer; pairings are updated each epoch to distribute traffic and reduce concentration or censorship risk.

Question 5

How are providers' service rewards proven and settled?

Accepted Answer

After completing API requests off-chain, providers retain relay records signed with a consumer, developer, or subscription key; the signature proves the service request. To avoid placing every request on-chain, the compute units (CU) of consecutive requests are aggregated into a session, and providers can use the final aggregated proof in the session to make a relay_payment claim. Rewards are not paid immediately on every API call. A delayed claim window after an epoch ends allows the current session aggregation to finish and enables on-chain verification of pairing and prevention of duplicate claims for the same session. When a subscription ends or a monthly trigger occurs, accumulated CU are used to allocate subscription costs according to service usage; after deducting validator and contributor shares, providers distribute rewards with their delegators under commission rules.

Question 6

How do LAVA supply and incentive funding work?

Accepted Answer

Lava's minting function is disabled, so the protocol does not create new LAVA through ongoing issuance. Early block-production and provider incentives may come from Bootstrap rewards pre-locked in a reward pool and gradually released under the rules. This should be distinguished from “an unchanged circulating supply”: releases from the reward pool change the path by which tokens move from the pool to participants, but they are not newly minted; unclaimed rewards and tokens slashed for fraud reduce supply. Provider rewards are also directly linked to consumers purchasing subscriptions, and governance can adjust subscription-plan prices according to token supply and demand.

Question 7

How does Lava link service quality to provider incentives?

Accepted Answer

Service quality affects whether providers can retain rewards and receive subsequent pairings. Consumers submit service-quality reports during sessions, and providers must include those reports when claiming rewards; failure to include them may result in lost rewards, while lower ratings can reduce accumulated CU by an amount set through governance. If a provider continually refuses connections or repeatedly returns errors, consumers can report its offline status through claim transactions by other providers. At the start of each epoch, the protocol evaluates the relevant reports; when the gap between the reported usage and the usage claimed by that provider reaches the rule threshold, the provider may be jailed and temporarily unable to receive new pairings until that status is lifted.

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