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Kusama Endpoints

When interacting with the Kusama network via Polkadot-JS Apps or other UIs and programmatic methods, you'd ideally be running your own node (text guide, video guide). Granted, that's not something everyone wants to do, so convenience trumps ideals in most cases. To facilitate this convenience, Kusama has several public endpoints you can use for your apps.

Parity Archive Node

Parity, the company that develops the Polkadot Rust client, maintains an archive node at endpoint wss://kusama-rpc.polkadot.io/.

To connect to the Parity node, use the endpoint in your JavaScript apps like so:

const{ ApiPromise, WsProvider } = require('@polkadot/api')

(async () => {
    const provider = new WsProvider('wss://kusama-rpc.polkadot.io/')
    const api = await ApiPromise.create({ provider })
    // ...

or in Polkadot-JS Apps by clicking the top-left corner of the screen and selecting the appropriate option:

Web3 Foundation Archive Node

The Web3 Foundation maintains an archive node at endpoint wss://cc3-5.kusama.network/.

To connect to this node, use the endpoint in your JavaScript apps like so:

const{ ApiPromise, WsProvider } = require('@polkadot/api')

(async () => {
    const provider = new WsProvider('wss://cc3-5.kusama.network/')
    const api = await ApiPromise.create({ provider })
    // ...

Connect to it in Polkadot Apps UI by clicking the top-left corner of the screen and selecting the appropriate option: