What Is Ankr?

Ankr (ticker ANKR) is one of the longest-running infrastructure providers in Web3. Its core product is a globally distributed network of RPC nodes, the servers that wallets and decentralized applications use to read data from and send transactions to blockchains. Ankr serves billions of these requests per day across more than 70 chains, making it a piece of plumbing that many crypto users rely on without ever noticing. Around that core, Ankr has built developer APIs, liquid staking products, and services for launching custom rollups and app chains.

Overview - Table of Contents
What Is Ankr?
Getting Started With Ankr
How To Get An Ankr Wallet?
Ankr Resources
How To Buy Ankr?
Latest Ankr News

Ankr was founded in 2017 by Chandler Song, Ryan Fang, and Stanley Wu. Song and Fang were classmates at the University of California, Berkeley, where they were involved with the Blockchain at Berkeley group, while Song met Wu at Amazon Web Services, where Wu was an engineer. The company originally explored distributed cloud computing before focusing on blockchain node infrastructure, an early bet on what is now often called DePIN, or decentralized physical infrastructure networks.

Ankr's flagship offering is its Web3 API and RPC service. Developers can use free public endpoints or pay for premium access with higher rate limits and advanced features. With the "Ankr Network 2.0" upgrade, the company moved toward a decentralized marketplace model in which independent node providers serve traffic and are rewarded for doing so, rather than all requests flowing through servers Ankr operates itself.

The ANKR token has a fixed maximum supply of 10 billion, all of which is in circulation. It is used to pay for Ankr's premium API and RPC plans, and node providers stake ANKR as collateral to participate in the network and earn a share of service revenue, which also gives token holders a role in governance. ANKR exists as an ERC-20 token on Ethereum and as a BEP-20 token on BNB Chain, among other networks.

Ankr is also a significant player in liquid staking. Its products let users stake assets such as ETH and BNB while receiving a liquid token (for example ankrETH or ankrBNB) that represents the staked position and can be used elsewhere in DeFi. This product line was the site of Ankr's worst moment: in December 2022, an attacker used a compromised deployer key to push a malicious upgrade to the aBNBc token contract (the predecessor of ankrBNB) and mint trillions of unbacked tokens, draining roughly $5 million from liquidity pools. Ankr later disclosed that the attack was carried out by a former employee who had inserted malicious code, said it was working with law enforcement to prosecute the person, compensated affected users and liquidity providers, replaced the broken token with ankrBNB via an airdrop to a pre-exploit snapshot, and moved its contracts to multi-signature controls to remove the single point of failure.

More recently, Ankr has leaned into the intersection of blockchain and AI. It incubated Neura, an EVM-compatible Layer 1 blockchain aimed at decentralized AI computation, which launched a public testnet in 2024 with a planned partial migration of ANKR tokens to the new chain. In 2025 Ankr also introduced RPCfi, a model that routes revenue from RPC traffic into on-chain yield, tying the ANKR token more directly to usage of the underlying infrastructure.

Getting Started With Ankr

Getting started with Ankr can mean holding the ANKR token, using its staking products, or building on its infrastructure:

Step 1: Set up an Ethereum-compatible wallet such as MetaMask or Trust Wallet. ANKR is an ERC-20 token, so any wallet that supports Ethereum tokens will work.
Step 2: Acquire ANKR on a centralized or decentralized exchange and withdraw it to your wallet.
Step 3: Explore Ankr's products: developers can grab a free RPC endpoint from the Web3 API, while holders of ETH or BNB can try Ankr's liquid staking to earn rewards while keeping their assets usable in DeFi.
Step 4: If you want deeper involvement, look into staking ANKR with node providers on the Ankr network to earn a share of service rewards.

How to Get an Ankr Wallet?

ANKR is primarily an ERC-20 token on Ethereum, with a BEP-20 version on BNB Chain, so mainstream multi-chain wallets handle it well.

MetaMask

MetaMask is the most widely used Ethereum wallet, available as a browser extension and mobile app. It holds ANKR natively and connects directly to Ankr's staking and developer dashboards.

Trust Wallet

Trust Wallet is a popular mobile wallet that supports ANKR on both Ethereum and BNB Chain, which is convenient if you interact with Ankr's BNB-based liquid staking tokens.

Hardware Wallets

A Ledger or Trezor device can be paired with MetaMask to keep your private keys offline, which is recommended for larger holdings.

Ankr Resources

How to Buy Ankr?

ANKR has been trading since 2019 and is widely listed.

Centralized Exchanges

ANKR is available on major exchanges including Binance, Coinbase, Kraken, Bybit, KuCoin, and Gate, typically traded against USD or USDT.

Decentralized Exchanges

On-chain, ANKR can be swapped on Uniswap on Ethereum and on PancakeSwap on BNB Chain, where its BEP-20 version trades.

Latest Ankr News

Ankr's recent direction is an expansion from pure node infrastructure into AI and DePIN. Neura, the AI-focused Layer 1 it incubated, has been running on public testnet with a mainnet planned to bring a partial migration of ANKR tokens, GPU compute payments, and "Initial Model Offerings" for funding AI models. The RPCfi initiative, launched in late 2025, aims to turn the network's RPC traffic into on-chain yield for token stakers.

Meanwhile the core business keeps growing, with support added for new chains, faster data streaming options for premium users, and continued liquid staking and rollup-as-a-service offerings. Because product lines, supported chains, and the Neura roadmap evolve quickly, the official website, blog, and documentation are the best sources for the current state of the network.