Fastest free Merlin Chain RPC, live no-key endpoint latency
HTTP round-trip latency for eth_getBlockByNumber against every available public Merlin Chain node, audited every 60 seconds from 3 regions.
TL;DR. As of , BlockPI leads rpc latency at 16 ms (p50, 24h) on Fastest free Merlin Chain RPC, live no-key endpoint latency. Source: OpenChainBench, https://openchainbench.com/benchmarks/merlin-rpc.
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Comparing free RPC endpoints across every chain we measure? Open the cross-chain RPC matrix →
Merlin Chain is an EVM-compatible Bitcoin Layer 2 network (chain ID 4200) that uses ZK-Rollup technology to inherit Bitcoin security while enabling smart contracts and DeFi. It exposes a standard Ethereum JSON-RPC interface. Public EVM endpoints are available without an API key from Merlin Official, dRPC and BlockPI. Every provider was live-verified with consecutive eth_getBlockByNumber probes at launch.
Methodology
Per-chain member of the RPC latency cluster, extended to Merlin Chain. We measure the round-trip latency of a single eth_getBlockByNumber ("latest", false) call against every available public Merlin Chain node that sustains continuous probing: 3 providers at launch, every 60 seconds, from us-east, eu-west and Singapore. The harness classifies every response (ok / http_err / jsonrpc_err / stale / timeout) with a standard EVM staleness gap. The cross-chain view lives on the parent rpc-capabilities benchmark; this page is the Merlin Chain-scoped answer with per-region breakdowns.
Frequently asked
What is the fastest free Merlin Chain RPC right now?
BlockPI currently leads at 16 ms (Merlin Chain block number p50 over the last 24h), measured against 3 providers probed every 60 seconds from us-east, eu-west and Singapore. The leaderboard re-sorts continuously against fresh Prometheus samples.
Which Merlin Chain RPC endpoints work without an API key?
3 endpoints sustain continuous keyless probing at launch: Merlin Official (rpc.merlinchain.io), dRPC (merlin.drpc.org) and BlockPI (merlin.blockpi.network). Every listed endpoint was live-verified with an eth_getBlockByNumber call returning a parsable block number before inclusion.
Does the fastest Merlin Chain RPC change by region?
Often. Public infra concentrates in specific regions; a gateway that wins from Amsterdam can lose from Singapore by multiples. The region tabs at the top of the page re-scope every number to a single origin.
How is Merlin Chain RPC latency measured here, technically?
One eth_getBlockByNumber JSON-RPC call every 60 seconds against each provider from each of 3 regions. Wall-clock round-trip is recorded at millisecond precision; p50/p90/p99 are computed via Prometheus quantile_over_time over 24 hours. Best-effort measurements; p50 is the median, p90 the 90th percentile and p99 the 99th percentile of latency samples collected over the last 24 hours.
Source code github.com/ChainBench/OpenChainBench/tree/main/harnesses/rpc-capabilities