The latest cycle taught a harsh lesson to DeFi protocol builders: incentivize issuance to pump charts, then drain treasuries and trust. Total value locked still appears large on dashboards, but TVL stock near the $150 billion mark masks fragile retention and cyclical outflows as farmers seek higher APRs elsewhere. The result is an engine of growth that gives way every time the symbolic rewards diminish.
Industry executives have been warning about this loop for years. The well-known playbook includes shipping a token, spraying incentives to boost TVL, celebrating the spike, and then watching the capital rotate. This creates surface-level momentum with no lasting value. The model invites mercenary liquidity and leaves communities with problems and weak fundamentals.
Sustainable returns come from the services people actually use and pay for: block space, liquidity provision, security, computation, and data access. Actual utility charges are modest, but they scale with use and get worse. The question DeFi has been grappling with is where to find more of these “real economy” revenue streams that don’t rely on continued token issuance.
Our incentive model has pre-existing revenue from the mainnet launch on day 0. We do not rely solely on inflationary issuance.
Neura’s business model is built around real usage-based revenue that is captured at the protocol level and recycled into liquidity, rewards and long… pic.twitter.com/XIolcOLhGW
–ars (@arsydefi) October 11, 2025
Infrastructure is the missing performance driver
Each chain action begins before a transaction hits a memory pool. Wallets and applications read status, retrieve balances, query logs, estimate gas and call methods thousands of times per second throughout the ecosystem. These remote procedure calls (RPCs) make up Web3’s invisible API and are essential for everything from wallets to rollups. Historically, invoices for these requests live off-chain as invoices to node providers and are paid in fiat currency.
The scale is enormous. Ankr, a Web3 native infrastructure provider, processes over 1 trillion monthly RPC requests across 90 blockchains, showing that crypto’s data plane is where the vast majority of user interactions actually occur. Yet almost none of this spending comes back on-chain to increase liquidity or reward the applications generating the load.
This discrepancy suggests a simple idea: if gas fees can enrich on-chain networks, why can’t RPC spending do the same? Turning infrastructure costs into on-chain cash would convert a perpetual expense into a cumulative asset – an always-on, usage-indexed source of return.
Transform calls into capital with RPCfi
RPCfi is a new primitive offered by Neura, an EVM-enabled layer 1 blockchain specifically designed for stablecoins, DeFi, and real-time digital finance. It captures RPC spend at the infrastructure layer and transforms it into on-chain liquidity and rewards. Where traditional setups let value escape to off-chain invoices, RPCfi redirects some of that demand into liquidity provision and points or rewards programs to create an engine that scales with usage.
“If gas fees reward computation and staking rewards security, RPCfi rewards the very pulse of Web3 – access to data, said Arsalan Evini, CEO of Neura. “It is the mirror image of gas yield, transforming off-chain RPC costs into on-chain liquidity and tapping into a new DeFi yield pool.”
This approach is accompanied by a broader approach aimed at aligning the basic economy with real activity. RPCfi is part of a broader toolkit that combines high-throughput deterministic infrastructure with demand-driven revenue streams, so builders, validators, and users partner as usage increases.
The solution in practice
Here’s how RPCfi works in practice:
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A decentralized application (DApp) spends $10,000 per month for Ankr’s Premium RPC services on BNB Chain.
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Under the new RPCfi model, 50% of this spend ($5,000) is automatically captured and redirected on-chain.
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The first step is to link the USD value to the Neura blockchain.
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This $5,000 is then used to purchase equal shares of BNB (BNB) and ANKR ($2,500 each).
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The resulting assets are then deposited into a liquidity pool via Zotto, Neura’s flagship veDEX/AMM product.
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Rewards generated from this liquidity position, including issuance and RPCfi points, go directly back to the original DApp.
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The DApp can then choose how to use these rewards: distribute them to holders, reward punters, or reinvest them.
This model goes live at the launch of the mainnet, natively integrated with Ankr’s existing infrastructure activities.
Teams can map their existing RPC line items to a recurring liquidity strategy, treating infrastructure as a budget line that pays off. Chain-owned LPs reduce reliance on mercenary capital, stabilize markets with tighter spreads, and unlock new incentives for demanding users. As traffic increases, the liquidity base increases with it, forming an organic moat anchored in usage rather than emissions.
Why does it finally work?
Historically, node providers behaved like Web2 SaaS with off-chain billing, fiat payments, and no on-chain recovery.
Ankr aims to change that. As a Web3 native RPC provider, it can uniquely redirect RPC value streams to the blockchain economy.
This partnership between Neura and Ankr comes full circle. RPC costs that were once drained from the ecosystem are now recycled into on-chain liquidity and rewards, strengthening the very networks that generate them.
New era for real-time finance
Neura was designed to power the next generation of real-time global financial services: fast, cheap and stable. But with RPCfi, it also introduces something deeper: a built-in, infrastructure-native yield mechanism that connects every transaction, every request, and every DApp interaction directly to network value.
The next chapter of DeFi favors a return that scales based on real activity and revenue. By converting the internet behind the scenes of crypto – every balance search, log query, and contract call – into on-chain liquidity, Neura’s RPCfi provides a path to resilient rewards and sustainable network effects. This turns a hidden cost center into the backbone of a healthier DeFi economy.
Learn more about Neura and Ankr
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