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

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
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.

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 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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IoT System for Tunnel Construction
The Zenitaka Corporation ('Zenitaka') has two major business areas: its architectural business focuses on structures such as government buildings, office buildings, and commercial facilities, while its civil engineering business is targeted at structures such as tunnels, bridges and dams. Within these areas, there presented two issues that have always persisted in regard to the construction of mountain tunnels. These issues are 'improving safety" and "reducing energy consumption". Mountain tunnels construction requires a massive amount of electricity. This is because there are many kinds of electrical equipment being used day and night, including construction machinery, construction lighting, and ventilating fan. Despite this, the amount of power consumption is generally not tightly managed. In many cases, the exact amount of power consumption is only ascertained when the bill from the power company becomes available. Sometimes, corporations install demand-monitoring equipment to help curb the maximum power demanded. However, even in these cases, the devices only allow the total volume of power consumption to be ascertained, or they may issue warnings to prevent the contracted volume of power from being exceeded. In order to tackle the issue of reducing power consumption, it was first necessary to obtain an accurate breakdown of how much power was being used in each particular area. In other words, we needed to be able to visualize the amount of power being consumed. Safety, was also not being managed very rigorously. Even now, tunnel construction sites often use a 'name label' system for managing entry into the work site. Specifically, red labels with white reverse sides that bear the workers' names on both sides are displayed at the tunnel work site entrance. The workers themselves then flip the name label to the appropriate side when entering or exiting from the work site to indicate whether or not they are working inside the tunnel at any given time. If a worker forgets to flip his or her name label when entering or exiting from the tunnel, management cannot be performed effectively. In order to tackle the challenges mentioned above, Zenitaka decided to build a system that could improve the safety of tunnel construction as well as reduce the amount of power consumed. In other words, this new system would facilitate a clear picture of which workers were working in each location at the mountain tunnel construction site, as well as which processes were being carried out at those respective locations at any given time. The system would maintain the safety of all workers while also carefully controlling the electrical equipment to reduce unnecessary power consumption. Having decided on the concept, our next concern was whether there existed any kind of robust hardware that would not break down at the construction work site, that could move freely in response to changes in the working environment, and that could accurately detect workers and vehicles using radio frequency identification (RFID). Given that this system would involve many components that were new to Zenitaka, we decided to enlist the cooperation of E.I.Sol Co., Ltd. ('E.I.Sol') as our joint development partner, as they had provided us with a highly practical proposal.
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