Google Cloud Platform > Case Studies > Blockchain.com: Streamlining Infrastructure with Google Cloud Spanner

Blockchain.com: Streamlining Infrastructure with Google Cloud Spanner

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Technology Category
  • Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Blockchain
  • Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Databases
Applicable Industries
  • Cement
  • Construction & Infrastructure
Use Cases
  • Construction Management
  • Infrastructure Inspection
Services
  • Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services
About The Customer

Blockchain.com is a leading digital assets company that is connecting the world to the future of finance. It is one of the fastest-growing and most trusted companies in its field, helping millions across the globe, from individuals to the largest institutions, get easy and safe access to digital assets. The company has raised more than $70 million in funding from leading investors including Lightspeed Venture Partners and Google Ventures. Blockchain.com supports more than 38 million accounts in 140 countries worldwide. It started out focusing on Bitcoin, before growing into a digital asset company that also covers other cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, and Stellar Lumens.

The Challenge

Blockchain.com, a leading cryptocurrency software company, was facing significant challenges in managing its large databases. The company's primary products, Blockchain Wallet and Blockchain Explorer, required complex calculations on hard-to-access data across vast databases. As the popularity of cryptocurrencies grew and the company expanded to cover other cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, and Stellar Lumens, securely maintaining these databases became a major undertaking with significant resource overheads. The company was spending a lot of time and resources on maintaining and managing its infrastructure, which was affecting its ability to focus on domain-specific challenges and deliver a peerless user experience across all products.

The Solution

Blockchain.com decided to replace a third of its infrastructure with Google Cloud Spanner, a managed service that scales on-demand or to match volumes. The implementation was simple, with the company just switching out its database layer for Google Cloud Spanner. The team also leveraged the import and export functionality of Google Cloud Spanner to perform a full restoration of the database in nine hours, instead of one week. Now, Blockchain.com is focusing on building more microservices with Google Cloud managed services. The company is expanding its use of Cloud SQL as a managed database with strong consistency at scale, and Stackdriver for logging metrics and analysis.

Operational Impact
  • By migrating to Google Cloud Spanner, Blockchain.com not only achieved significant cost savings but also experienced a step-change in the way its engineers work. Now, they can spend less time maintaining and managing the huge infrastructure, and more time on domain-specific challenges. This has enabled the company to deliver a peerless user experience across all products. The move to Google Cloud Spanner has also given the company the flexibility to test code against production data. Furthermore, the company is now better prepared for the future of a dynamic market in strategic ways that will drive the use of data in decision-making across product and engineering.

Quantitative Benefit
  • 30% reduction in the comparable costs of running the database

  • Replaced one third of entire infrastructure with a single managed service using Cloud Spanner

  • Restored entire database in nine hours instead of one week

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