With Alchemy's Supernode, Zerion builds web3 wallet infra for millions of people

Working with Alchemy has helped us save the equivalent of three full-time engineers, who otherwise would have to be heads down on infra maintenance, at all times.

About Zerion

Zerion is a smart, social, web3 wallet where users can easily manage their DeFi and NFT portfolios across multiple blockchains. A wallet user can trade NFTs, buy, lend, or stake crypto through DeFi protocols, and track activity across separate wallets — all from one, unified Zerion dashboard.

For developers that want to build their own wallet user interface (UI), Zerion offers an API and SDK that allows them to create a UI for users to easily track and transact tokens, trade NFTs, and use DeFi protocols.

Rainbow, StakeDAO, and Prysm have all integrated Zerion’s API, and there are over 2 million people reliant on Zerion’s technology to track and manage their web3 portfolio.

In this example, in a single API call, a developer fetches, manages and tracks token balances across three DeFi protocols, Synthetix, Aave, and PoolTogether, with no additional infrastructure or protocol-specific integrations.

Zerion’s API supports various token types, including NFTs, and ERC20s, — with plans to continue expanding into new primitives and blockchains.

As web3 continues to grow, Zerion’s infrastructure will help make wallet developers' lives easier.

Bringing a better experience to millions of users

Zerion is integrated within wallets, DAOs, protocols and other web3 products. When they first launched in 2018, they were managing their own blockchain infrastructure. But they lacked the resources to manage the necessary infrastructure, and as their ecosystem started to grow, maintaining a reliable blockchain connection was impossible.

Running their own infrastructure was especially challenging for them during protocol upgrades and releases - each time requiring heads down maintenance work that took valuable engineering time away from building the frontend product. In order to build a sustainable app, they needed a ground-up infrastructure solution.

To solve their reliability problem, they formed a partnership with Alchemy — the web3 developer platform

Zerion decided to trust Alchemy with their blockchain infrastructure. Alchemy gave Zerion best in-class reliability — with increased up-time that brought them previously unseen levels of stability.

Before we integrated with Alchemy, we ran our own blockchain infrastructure. This approach was impossible to maintain and scale without issues. Any industry-wide update would take us hours to implement and caused headaches across the board. With Alchemy, we’ve completely eliminated these problems we used to face, and have scaled rapidly since.

Now, Alchemy’s Supernode is the foundational piece of tech that enables Zerion’s rapid growth. With Supernode’s reliability and infinite scalability, Zerion’s API can power dozens of other wallets, millions of active users, and thousands of unique daily requests, with zero data inaccuracies or performance issues. 

Through Supernode, Zerion’s API and SDK receives information directly from the blockchain. So if other token-tracking websites like CoinGecko or CoinMarketCap experience down-time, Zerion's uptime will remain unaffected.

Zerion’s product is constantly monitoring and reading on-chain data. To do this consistently well, Zerion’s engineering team regularly uses products like Alchemy’s Dashboard and Mempool Watcher to get an in-depth look at usage patterns and resolve on-chain issues. 

Zerion also uses Alchemy’s Trace API, an endpoint within Alchemy’s Enhanced API suite. Trace API methods give deep insights into transaction processing on the blockchain, vital for Zerion’s wallet.

One of the calls Zerion uses is trace_block — an API request that returns all the traces for a defined block, giving developers more specific information on how each transaction in a block is interacting with the blockchain. If a particular transaction is flagged by Zerion’s block watcher, they can quickly access the transaction information returned through the trace_block call – saving them the headache of having to query individual transactions on-chain. 

In this example, a user queries the Trace API with the trace_block call and the parameter 0x2ed119 as the block number (this translates to the 3068185th block produced). The API then traces all the transactions that have occurred on that block and returns them to the user. This can be extremely powerful for companies like Zerion, who have created entire APIs based on Trace calls.

A relationship that goes beyond infrastructure partners

Zerion needs a partner they can count on 100% of the time, and they consider Alchemy to be an extension of their engineering team. Zerion has deep trust in Alchemy’s engineering team, knowing first hand that they are available 24/7 to help.

Because of this, Alchemy is Zerion’s go-to problem-solving partner and resource for debugging.

Alchemy’s customer-support team has been top-notch. On the rare occasion that there’s an issue that’s not even related to Alchemy, such as a relayer going down or block producers giving bad information, Alchemy’s engineers are the first team we call. They are the first to step in, investigate and resolve the issue for the entire ecosystem.

Now, Zerion has made reliability a large part of their product offering for their wallet and APIs, a stark contrast from the infrastructure issues they faced early on. As Zerion continues to scale, they’ll continue to leverage Alchemy as a resource for collaboration, problem solving, and growth.

Get started on Alchemy today!

FAQs

How do you get started with the Zerion Smart Wallet?

Download Zerion’s Social Web3 Wallet and get access to features like cross-chain support, smart trading across DEXs, easy fiat on-ramps, and more.

Getting Started:

1. Download the Zerion mobile app on iOS or Android. 

2. Follow the instructions on screen to either create a new wallet or import an existing one

What is a wallet?

A wallet is a tool to hold and manage your cryptocurrency assets that originate on the blockchain. Cryptographically issued and secured, web3 wallets are the backbone for using blockchain technology. Wallets can be used to transfer digital assets between different addresses, sign transactions and deploy smart contracts.

What is an NFT?

A non-fungible-token, also known as an NFT, is a token on the blockchain that cannot be duplicated. This means that an NFT cannot be replicated, making no two NFTs the same.

NFTs allow creators to tokenize and sell their digital art, games, music, and other collectibles on the blockchain in a safe and secure way.

What is DeFi?

Decentralized Finance, also known as DeFi, is a subsection of the cryptocurrency industry that allows peer-to-peer financial interactions including lending, staking, exchanging, and yield generation.

Through smart contracts on the blockchain, individuals are able to securely access different decentralized protocols that offer these financial mechanisms. Unlike traditional finance, historically defined by a central intermediary, DeFi protocols allow decentralized, peer-to-peer interactions.