How Kriptomat Cut Its Costs By 94% with Moralis
Kriptomat is the Estonia-based fintech company that brings together decentralized and centralized finance through its cryptocurrency exchange.
- Nodes
- Developer Hours
- Moralis Enterprise
We have been following Moralis since its inception and have always resonated with their philosophy to streamline the chaotic nature of blockchain technology, making it more accessible to the everyday user.
Co-FounderSerge Mahmutovic
Kriptomat
Co-Founder of Kriptomat
Serge Mahmutovic
CHALLENGE
Kriptomat faced technical challenges preventing the project from scaling and hampering their operational efficiency. Their in-house infra setup diverted precious dev time away from new product development and towards maintenance.
SOLUTION
Use Moralis’ suite of APIs and Moralis Streams to offload Kriptomat’s in-house developers. Leverage Moralis to achieve better operational efficiency, better cost-efficiency, and to scale more sustainably.
RESULTS
Kriptomat was able to cut its costs by 94% by integrating Moralis. At the same time, Moralis freed up valuable developer resources, allowing Kriptomat to bring new products to market and improve the user experience.
About Kriptomat
Kriptomat is a leading Estonia-based fintech company known for its cryptocurrency exchange, which brings together decentralized and centralized finance through a single intuitive platform. Whether exploring DeFi, CeFi, or connecting with Web3, Kriptomat simplifies buying, selling, storing, and investing in cryptocurrencies. Since its founding in 2018, Kriptomat has strived to make cryptocurrencies accessible to everyone, focusing on simplicity, security, and exceptional customer support. Available in over 20 languages and with over 500,000 users, Kriptomat provides a global gateway to crypto, complete with a wide range of cryptocurrencies and Web3 wallets.
Kriptomat’s Challenge
As Kriptomat expanded their cryptocurrency offerings, they faced growing technical challenges impacting their operational efficiency and scalability. Initially, they managed their blockchain infrastructure independently, maintaining nodes for each blockchain network to ensure fast and secure access to blockchain data. However, this setup proved increasingly difficult to maintain due to several critical issues:
Node Synchronization: Kriptomat’s nodes frequently fell out of sync with their respective networks, requiring significant time to resynchronize. This necessitated the use of backup nodes, adding complexity and cost to Kriptomat’s infrastructure.
Software Updates: Constant monitoring was required to keep node software up-to-date, which involved manual updates and consumed considerable resources.
Blockchain Forking: Occasional forking of blockchains introduced additional challenges, requiring swift and effective responses to maintain service continuity.
Beyond node-specific issues, the architecture of Kriptomat’s system included multiple layers that compounded the complexity:
- A middleware “wrapper” was necessary to efficiently query blockchain data from the nodes. This layer often involved a database and caching mechanisms tailored for each blockchain.
- The top layer of Kriptomat’s infrastructure handled the business logic, such as processing transactions and managing token balances.
- As Kriptomat strove to support more blockchain networks, maintaining the existing infrastructure became untenable.
The blockchain landscape is inherently dynamic, with new blockchains emerging frequently, regular releases of new versions, and common breaking changes. Factors such as internal conflicts within projects and forking within blockchain projects add to the unpredictability. Kriptomat found they needed three whole dedicated teams to maintain its infra setup:
- A Node team focused on DevOps.
- A Wrapper team of NodeJS developers.
- A Transactions and Token Balances team.
This division of labor proved unscalable for a smaller company like Kriptomat, diverting significant developer time away from new product development and towards maintenance. Even when Kriptomat decided to outsource node management to SaaS providers, they faced challenges liberating devs working on their node wrapper code and other associated systems.
Kriptomat’s Solution: Moralis APIs
Kriptomat found that while some solutions could process blockchain data and offer it in a user-friendly manner, these typically would only support specific blockchains. Kriptomat found that the only comprehensive solution to standardize support across all their necessary blockchains in a unified manner was Moralis’ suite of APIs.
Moralis offers not just basic functionalities but also advanced features that are immensely beneficial. Moralis provides a robust NFT Spam filter, a common pain point in the NFT space.
Moralis’ APIs enabled Kriptomat to drastically simplify its infrastructure. With the help of Moralis, Kriptomat could overcome the challenges of node maintenance and middleware complexities, freeing up valuable developer resources. Moralis’s features, like the NFT Spam filter and Streams API, significantly enhanced Kriptomat’s ability to provide users with real-time updates.
What’s more, features like being able to retrieve transactions from an address complete with all necessary details, easily obtain tokens and native balances from an address, access NFTs from an address including support for ERC-1155 balances, and fetch tokens and NFT metadata effortlessly made it an easy decision for Kriptomat to go with Moralis.
When it comes to Moralis’ NFT Spam filter, Kriptomat knew that other third-party services charge significantly for an NFT filtering engine that includes features like OCR and AI image recognition, as well as website phishing detection. However, Moralis offers this service out of the box. Using Streams API, Kriptomat is notified via Moralis’ webhooks of any on-chain activity related to the addresses they monitor – whether it’s a transfer, contract call, or NFT/token airdrop. This functionality has proven invaluable to Kriptomat during the development of their new product, “WEB3 Wallets”.
Building on Moralis’ features, Kriptomat developed the ‘Buy Any Token’ feature, an innovative application of their WEB3 Wallet Technology. This feature integrates the capabilities of both centralized and decentralized exchanges, allowing users to seamlessly purchase a range of DEX tokens directly through Kriptomat’s platform.
In short, the “Buy Any Token” feature allows users to interact with the DeFi space with simplified transactions, enhanced security & convenience, a user-friendly experience, and real-time updates.
Results with Moralis
Integrating Moralis APIs allowed Kriptomat to develop its WEB3 Wallets product and Buy Any Token feature, and it also resulted in dramatic cost savings, boosted efficiency, and helped Kriptomat scale. Check out some of the results:
- Cost Efficiency: Transitioning to Moralis resulted in substantial cost savings, reducing annual infrastructure expenses from $24,000 to as little as $588, even as Kriptomat scaled.
- Operational Efficiency: The reduction in complexity allowed Kriptomat to reallocate resources towards strategic initiatives, improving service offerings and operational capabilities.
- Enhanced User Experience: The ‘Buy Any Token’ feature, supported by Moralis, revolutionized how Kriptomat’s users interact with DeFi and WEB3, simplifying transactions and enhancing security.
Moralis relieves us from concerns about node uptime, versions, or synchronization status. With Moralis, requesting any blockchain data becomes straightforward.
Below, we’ve outlined a graph tracking Kriptomat’s annual costs associated with maintaining their blockchain infrastructure from 2018 to 2024. As Kriptomat’s operations expanded, the number of nodes required grew significantly, leading to a steep increase in costs. Kriptomat’s strategic shift to Moralis in 2023 led to a massive reduction in costs:
2018 – 2022: During this period, Kriptomat scaled its infrastructure to support increasing demand. Kriptomat started with two nodes in 2018, costing $2,400 annually, and gradually expanded to 20 nodes by 2022, which pushed Kriptomat’s annual cost of nodes to $24,000.
2023: Kriptomat transitioned to Moralis and a plan costing $49 per month – or $588 per year – resulting in substantial cost savings.
2024: Kriptomat upgraded to a more comprehensive business plan with Moralis at $249 per month. Despite having scaled since implementing Moralis, this led to significant cost efficiencies, totaling $2,988 for the year.
How Kriptomat Cut Web3 Costs with Moralis
After integrating Moralis into their systems, Kriptomat immediately got tangible efficiency gains and results. Below, we’ve illustrated some of the performance improvements and cost savings Kriptomat saw when switching to Moralis.
Cost Before Using Moralis
Node Costs: Prior to using Moralis, Kriptomat maintained nodes for ten different blockchains, some with backup nodes, at a total cost of approximately $2,000 per month. Each Ethereum node, for instance, required 16GB of RAM and 8 CPUs, with an associated cost of around $100 per month.
Developer Hours: Prior to using Moralis, Kriptomat allocated at least one full-time developer to infrastructure maintenance for tasks such as adding new blockchains or improving performance. This diverted resources from product development and represented a significant ongoing expense beyond the direct hardware costs.
Costs After Using Moralis
With Moralis, Kriptomat was able to replace its complex infrastructure with a more cost-effective solution. The initial switch was made to a Moralis plan costing just $49 per month, which they later upgraded to a business plan at $249 per month. Using Moralis resulted in a cost reduction of 93.775% per month for infrastructure-related costs for Kriptomat, as detailed in the diagram below:
About Moralis
Moralis is a leading crypto data provider that helps companies build great user experiences and drive engagement, growth, and revenue in their applications through Moralis’ suite of APIs and Moralis Nodes. These scalable, cross-chain data products – such as the NFT API, Wallet API, Token API, Price API, Blockchain API, Moralis Streams, and Moralis Nodes – seek to bridge the development gap between Web2 and Web3.
Conclusion
Integrating Moralis has allowed Kriptomat to scale efficiently and respond adeptly to market demands. This strategic partnership has allowed Kriptomat to focus on enhancing user experiences and expanding its product offerings. Learn more about Kriptomat at https://kriptomat.io/.