Finding the best solutions is critical when building software. Adding to a tech stack can either make life much easier or infinitely more difficult. (Guess which one we prefer?) Chainstarters wants to take web3 mainstream, starting with its easy-to-use NFT solutions. So when we were building our platform, we wanted to incorporate tech that would allow our product to perform and provide users with a great experience. And that's why we chose to partner with Alchemy.
Why Chainstarters Chose Alchemy
At Chainstarters, we were initially drawn to Alchemy because of the breadth of their multi-chain support. Because Chainstarters is a platform that offers our customers the option to deploy on Ethereum or Polygon – with plans to add additional popular chains – working with a developer platform with multi-chain support was a top priority for us. We needed a highly performant, one-stop-shop solution. And on top of fulfilling those needs, Alchemy is competitively priced.
Because Alchemy’s documentation and support are best-in-class, adding their infrastructure to our tech stack was incredibly easy. From the outset, their comprehensive docs provided precise details that allowed us to get started and scale easily. For any additional questions we had, we were able to reach out to Alchemy’s very responsive support team.
How Chainstarters Uses Alchemy
Chainstarters uses Alchemy’s Supernode to connect to the blockchain and to track blockchain activity, e.g., events, asset transfers. We then showcase that information on our platform so our users can integrate the data into whatever NFT solution they’re building.
By using Alchemy on the backend, we are able to abstract away the necessity for our customers to directly connect to the blockchain. This gives them a truly no-code solution, ensuring that they can successfully create NFT projects and campaigns that drive meaningful, positive outcomes for their businesses.
In summary, we have gotten into the weeds of the tech so they don‘t have to.
Why Chainstarters Loves Alchemy
Alchemy Supernode
As noted above, we were initially drawn to Alchemy because of their multi-chain support and affordable price point. But that’s not enough to keep a customer – the product has to perform. And Alchemy does just that.
Alchemy’s Supernode infrastructure allows us to provide our users with a reliable and scalable experience. For example, if a client wants to mint a thousand NFTs on our platform, Alchemy ensures that the transactions are processed reliably, scalably, and accurately – it works every time!
Reliability and scalability are vital to the success of any project, but they can be elusive dimensions in this still-nascent world of web3 development. Not so with Alchemy. Their infrastructure is stable, enabling easy and quick node connection, and their product scales to match the volume of our blockchain requests. And that means happy customers on our end.
Enhanced APIs
On top of their infrastructure, Alchemy offers a suite of Enhanced APIs, which enables us to build what we need. Some of the tech we currently leverage and rely upon most is their NFT API. As stated in their documentation, “Rather than searching, indexing, and storing data yourself - you can now make one request to fetch specific NFT information for both ERC-721 and ERC-1155 tokens.”
Websockets and NFT API Webhooks
Alchemy’s websocket technology – which allows for tracking of decentralized transactions by communicating events to our caching microservice – is superior to others and is another product we’re totally dependent on. Websockets are like a telephone line that is unfortunately prone to dropping calls. But Alchemy’s websocket technology tracks everything that is sent back and forth – even if it drops – such that nothing is lost. This is exceptionally cool.
Similarly, we are particularly excited by the prospect of NFT API webhooks, which Alchemy has said is on their roadmap. You know how you get a notification when you purchase something from your credit card? Imagine that, but for NFT events. These webhooks would trigger a bit of code when a NFT event takes place, allowing our customers access to real-time NFT event insights. We’ll start integrating this product as soon as it’s available.
Testnet Coverage
Another massive benefit: Ethereum and Polygon tesnet coverage for all of Alchemy’s API methods. The coverage here is huge, and allows us to test production-ready code for free on testnets, and ensure it will perform on mainnet without having to outlay capital of our own.
The Developer Dashboard
Alchemy also has a well-organized dashboard that alerts us about specific activity and displays tons of useful metrics. A snapshot of ours:
Looking to the Future
We have a detailed roadmap of where we want to take our product in the future. And we will continue to utilize newly-released solutions by Alchemy to help make that happen. We’re thrilled and excited to see how Alchemy will continue to innovate, given how much we like their current suite of technologies.
Chainstarters is proud to partner with Alchemy as we build products that will help take web3 mainstream. We make it possible for businesses to leverage blockchain technology in meaningful ways, and our customers can rest assured knowing that our products are using the best tech out there. If you want your business to engage the next generation of consumers through powerful NFT solutions, contact us today!
