Why using Alchemy is better than using the Mainnet…

Anyone who has joined any of the live classes that I have taught on the Inside Scoop Discord will have heard me rave about how good Alchemy is and why it is so much better than using the Infura RPC that MetaMask first provides you with. In this article, I will cover what Alchemy is and how to set it up!

*I use the term Mainnet a lot within this article due to MetaMask calling the RPC that they give you by default which is in fact a shared one provided by Infura; the Mainnet.

What is Alchemy?

“Alchemy Supernode scales every piece of node functionality with dedicated distributed systems and maintains real-time data correctness with a proprietary coordinator service.” — From the Alchemy Website

Picture it like this:
The Mainnet is the main street that everyone uses to get to work in the morning, while Alchemy is a super-fast highway that gets you in front of the traffic, yes you pay a little bit extra, but sometimes you’re in a rush and need to get somewhere quickly.

In the world of De-Fi trading, speed is of the essence. With an average block time of 13.4 seconds on the Ethereum network (source: https://ethstats.net), keep in mind that this is under pretty calm network conditions, but in the case of a highly sought after NFT drop or token launch, things are much different. During these times we see thousands of transactions hitting the network causing congestion, blocks will be mined every 1–2 seconds as opposed to 13. This is the use case where you will truly see the difference using Alchemy versus the Mainnet, with Alchemy you will cut the traffic and broadcast your transaction to the network much faster, giving you the best shot at getting into these blocks that are being mined like crazy.

The Mainnet is where the majority of transactions are propagated, regardless of who sends them. This means that large companies and individual traders are putting their transactions out to miners through the network which could lead to unavoidable traffic jams, unavoidable unless you are using your own RPC to put your transaction out as fast as possible! Whereas with Alchemy, you’ll have access to a state-of-the-art exclusive node network with one main mission — cutting to the front of the line.

Now I know this sounds like one giant advertisement, but I can assure you that I am only telling you this because it is a tool that I have personally used for the last year and measured the difference, sometimes being as much as 7 seconds faster. 7 seconds? That’s not much right? It is when it comes to the Blockchain as every single second counts when you want to get in on a hyped-up mint and a gas war is imminent.

How to add Alchemy as a Custom RPC?

Let’s go step by step on how to add Alchemy as a Custom RPC:

The first thing you want to do is to click the circle next to where it says whichever network you are on. For me it says Ethereum Mainnet, clicking this will open a drop-down menu.

From here you click on the button that says Settings next to the cogwheel icon, this will open up your settings menu.

On the settings menu, look down the list and click on Networks and you will be greeted by the Networks menu.

Next, you will see a blue button that says “Add a Network”, you’ll want to click this to begin adding a new custom RPC.

Here is where you can fill in all the relevant details to add your own Custom RPC. When adding Alchemy specifically you will have to look at your Alchemy App Dashboard and click “view key” to find your Custom RPC URL. See below:

The options are as follows:

Name — You can name this whatever you want.
Custom RPC URL — This is the HTTP link you copy from your Dashboard.
Chain ID — For Ethereum, it is 1.
Currency Symbol — For Ethereum it is ETH.
Block Explorer URL — For Ethereum it is https://etherscan.io/

If you followed along and completed every step correctly, you will see that your network will now say whatever you named your Custom RPC. This means that you are now on the Custom Network that you just created. Congratulations!

For more information, or support you can join either the Inside Scoop or Alchemy Discord:

Scoop Discord — discord.gg/Scoop
Alchemy Discord — discord.gg/Alchemy

Alchemy Website — https://www.alchemy.com/

Written by Birkin
@0xBirkin
@ScoopComics