Feb. 2022, Grace
On February 8, the list of blockchain unicorn platforms was updated again, and Alchemy became a newcomer. With the latest round of financing of $200 million, the valuation reached $10.2 billion.
Why is Alchemy backed by VCs like Lightspeed, Silver Lake, and a16z? This article will decipher Alchemy's magic formula from functional applications.
Alchemy's background
In 2017, Nikil Viswanatha and Joe Lau co-founded Alchemy. Positioned as a blockchain infrastructure platform, it aims to become the AWS of the blockchain world. Currently, it provides blockchain development platform services for Web3 developers.
According to the official website, Alchemy currently powers the products of 99% of the world's leading blockchain companies. Currently Alchemy already supports the direct deployment of created applications to 6 chains, including Ethereum, Flow, Arbitrum, Crypto.org, Optimism and Polygon.
And as of February 16, on-chain transactions have reached $30 billion. Applications such as AAVE, 0x, OpenSea, Dapper, etc. are all supported by Alchemy.
Four Features of Alchemy
1. Alchemy Supernod
The infrastructure applied in Web2 is that multiple servers are hosted on load balancers, which is not applicable in Web3. Each block and each node of the blockchain contains a large amount of information, which can easily lead to application crashes. The Alchemy Supernod was born.
Alchemy Supernod is extended for nodes that load a large amount of information, and the use of distributed systems can provide relatively strong scalability. Data clutter is also resolved with Alchemy Suoernod's proprietary reconciliation server maintenance, which basically ensures data correctness and tries to synchronize.
How to better deploy and interact between blockchains, nodes and applications is a problem that blockchain developers need to consider now. Alchemy Supernod provides an out-of-the-box solution.
Alchemy Supernode Infrastructure Diagram
2、Alchemy Bulid
Launching a new blockchain product requires focusing on the important, right, and critical parts. Instead of some simple and repetitive content, it can save time and quickly launch the application. And Alchemy Build provides a solution for this. Developers can use Alchemy Build to replace the hassle of repeatedly building the Web3 infrastructure.
Every application cannot be perfect, and it must be constantly adjusted and iterated. Alchemy Build has a trick for this too. The Explorer and Mempool features help you quickly find what went wrong and need tweaking, and the Composer feature provides quick tweaks with a neat panel.
Alchemy Build Composer- Configuration Request Board
The Alchemy Build function application has been reflected and verified in the top applications such as Dapper Labs , the creation team of CryptoKitties, and 0x .
3、Alchemy Monitor
To make adjustments after the application is released, it is necessary to report errors in a timely manner. You can choose to form a special monitoring team, and monitor the project to find errors and adjust them in time. Although feasible, but the economy is not high.
In order to release development resources, Alchemy Monitor provides monitoring and analysis of application health, usage, and user behavior. Present and issue simple reports in a dashboard.
4、Alchemy Notify
The role of Alchemy Notify is to bridge the gap between developers and users. Allows developers to push key information related to user revenue to users. Including wallet address changes, Gas fee changes, Mined Transactions, and transaction information.
This is similar to a stock APP that pushes stock price-related information to users in real time. It can be called Web3's information reminder assistant.
In addition to these four powerful features, there are a few more features that help build Web3:
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Alchemy Amplify helps with app marketing;
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Enhanced Web3 APIs further enhance the API based on Alchemy Supernod to obtain more data information with fewer request commands;
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The NFT API allows developers to quickly build their own NFT applications.
Financing at Alchemy
The power of the above-mentioned functions has been verified in financing. In other words, these functions have been recognized by the market at least at this stage. According to the financing data collected by Footprint Analytics, Alchemy has completed 6 financings.
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In January 2018, completed the seed round invested by Velocity Canada.
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In April 2019, an equity financing of USD 18.9 million was completed.
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In December 2019, it completed a $15 million Series A financing with participation from Pantera Capital and Samsung Ventures.
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In April 2021, it completed a $80 million Series B financing.
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In October 2021, it completed a $250 million Series C financing, with a valuation of $3.5 billion, led by a16z.
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In February 2022, it completed a $200 million C-1 round of financing, with a valuation of $10.2 billion, led by Lightspeed and Silver Lake.
write at the end
In the era of Web1, Microsoft's Windows became the power engine of PC (Personal Computer), and Web2 iOS, Android and Google dominated the market. In the world where Web3 is built on the chain, the requirements for infrastructure are very high. Launching an app is not only good, but also fast.
At present, Alchemy can meet the basic requirements of Web3 to launch applications quickly and reliably, but the changes of Web3 relying on blockchain technology must be rapid. Alchemy needs to keep improving. For example, in addition to providing customized services for B-end users, it is possible to add more services.
In addition to Alchemy, it is hoped that more Web3 infrastructure platforms will emerge to accelerate the maturity of Web3.
This article is contributed by the Footprint Analytics community.
About Footprint Analytics:
Footprint Analytics is a one-stop visual blockchain data analysis platform. Footprint assisted in solving the problem of data cleaning and integration on the chain, allowing users to enjoy a zero-threshold blockchain data analysis experience for free. With more than a thousand tabulation templates and a drag-and-drop charting experience, anyone can build their own personalized data charts within 10 seconds, easily gain insight into the data on the chain, and understand the stories behind the data.
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