DeFi infrastructure: Short playbook for scaling, securing, and optimizing DeFi projects

The success of your DeFi app or platform always depends on the infrastructure choices you make, fitting the tiny dimensions of compliance, security, and other restrictions. For us as DevOps experts, the most fascinating aspect of DeFi infrastructures is that you can’t make it “in a vacuum.” 

Stay profitable and competitive, yet meet all the compliance requirements, scale according to the users’ demands, and never experience any security breach or data loss—these are the dreams of all DeFi execs.

The right moves now can unlock new scale, security, and efficiency. This playbook distills advanced strategies, shortcuts, and real-world lessons for C-levels building the next wave of DeFi.

The modern DeFi stack: What’s under the hood? 

DeFi infrastructure is a layered performance system. 

• At the ingress, RPC endpoints determine request latency, reliability, and burst tolerance; saturated or rate-limited gateways cascade into failed transactions and slippage.
• Indexing layers transform raw chain data into a queryable state; the breadth of indexed entities and freshness windows drive UX responsiveness for portfolios, risk engines, and oracles. 
• Analytics adds behavioral, risk, and operational insights; real-time telemetry and anomaly detection shorten incident MTTR and inform routing, fee strategies, and market-making logic.
• MEV protection governs transaction ordering and leakage; private mempools, bundle relays, and sim-based pre-trade checks reduce sandwich and backrun risk, improving execution quality. 

• Cross-chain infrastructure (bridges, intent routers, message layers) manages liquidity mobility and state consistency; guarantees, latency, and failover policies directly affect capital efficiency and user trust. 
• Monitoring and observability tie the stack together with SLOs, traces, and alerts; proactive degradation detection avoids TVL, peg, or liquidation shocks. 

Practically, this resembles an always-on, high-frequency financial backbone: microseconds and determinism matter, routing must be adaptive, and safety rails must be default-on. 

Winning teams treat infra as a quant discipline—measure, simulate, and re-route—so traders, liquidators, and end users experience consistent, low-variance performance across volatile conditions.

So, who’d you gonna call? DeFi infrastructure providers! 

DeFi infrastructure providers overview

Let’s quickly look at what stands behind those most popular names you’ve heard.

TL;DR: Selected DeFi infrastructure providers

Note: For more precise information about your current project and requirements, be sure to contact providers directly!

• RPC Fast: Designed for latency-sensitive DeFi tasks like DEXs, liquidations, and arbitrage, with MEV-aware routing for better execution and reliability; limited scope may require additional tools for other needs.
• Alchemy: Ideal for teams needing mature dev tools and data APIs to accelerate development and analytics, but may increase costs and vendor dependence at scale.
• Infura: Good for mainstream Ethereum/L2 access, compatible with the ecosystem, reduces integration effort, but may face rate limits and centralization issues at peak times.
• QuickNode: Suitable for expanding multi-chain projects, offers quick setup, speeds up experiments and launches, but regional latency may impact performance.
• Chainstack: Best for enterprises requiring private/hybrid deployments and detailed controls; simplifies governance. Might lack DeFi features, requiring in-house MEV/data development.
• Blockdaemon: Perfect for validator/ staking operations and institutional SLA needs; manages node operations efficiently; may lack DeFi/MEV tools, requiring additional providers.
• Ankr: Cost-effective for global RPC coverage, reduces infrastructure costs for non-latency-critical tasks; support variability can affect incident response.

Vendor-neutral verification checklist for choosing the DeFi infra provider

This is a comprehensive set of questions and indicators to collect from DeFi infrastructure providers. Compare them to make the right choice for your project.

Workload profile and test harness

• Define method mix and weights for your app: eth_call (hot paths), eth_getLogs (range scans), trace_, debug_, getBalance, getBlockByNumber, mempool queries, and write flows (sendRawTransaction/private tx).
• Specify concurrency and burst shapes: steady state, 10x surge, 100x micro-bursts (e.g., token listings, volatile windows).
• Regions in scope: the exact POPs your users hit (e.g., FRA, LHR, SFO, IAD, SGP, NRT).
• Provide a reproducible harness: same wallet set, same block ranges, same filters, identical retry/backoff.

Latency and throughput SLOs

• Request p50/p95/p99 for each method in each region at N concurrent clients; include time-to-first-byte and full response time.
• Document max sustainable RPS and behavior when exceeding limits (throttle code, backoff headers, error classes).

Rate limits and burst handling

• Hard and soft limits by plan; elastic headroom policy; documented 429/5xx shapes; retry-after headers; fairness under contention.
• Isolation options: dedicated clusters, per-endpoint isolation, noisy neighbor protections.

Availability, failover, and multi-cloud/region

• Uptime SLA by product; real-time failover policies across regions and clouds; control over region pinning vs anycast.
• Health-check and circuit-breaker guidance for clients; documented RTO/RPO for outages.
• Evidence of chaos testing and the last three failover drills; customer-facing runbooks.

Data correctness and freshness

• Head block lag distributions; reorg handling policy and max reorg depth tolerated.
• Consistency across POPs (read-after-write, mempool parity); archive accuracy tests (state proofs or merkle checks).
• For indexing APIs/subgraphs: freshness windows, backfill speed, and late data handling.

MEV protection and transaction privacy

• Private tx support: relay partners (e.g., Flashbots/Bloxroute/Taichi), bundle support, simulated fills, frontrun/sandwich protections.
• Visibility guarantees (who sees my tx before inclusion), inclusion latency stats, and fallback to public mempool behavior.
• Configurable slippage guards, nonce management, and stuck-tx automation.

Observability and analytics

• Per-endpoint logs, traces, and request metadata export (headers; correlation IDs); retention and export formats.
• Real-time dashboards for latency/errors/throughput; webhooks/alerts for SLO violations; spend and quota analytics.

Security and compliance

• Attestations: SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, penetration test summaries, and key management practices.
• DDoS posture, WAF, bot mitigation; customer IP allowlists/VPN/privatelink options.
• Data residency options and lawful intercept posture; sanctions policy affecting RPC methods.

Change management

• Notice periods for breaking changes, chain upgrades, and client version bumps; backward compatibility policies.
• Staging/sandbox parity with production; deterministic version pinning per endpoint.

Support and incident response

• MTTA/MTTR by severity; staffed hours and escalation paths (Slack/Telegram/on-call).
• Postmortem commitment and circulation timelines; status page transparency and historical uptime.

Pricing and commercial terms

• Pricing unit and comparability (per request vs compute units vs credits); overflow pricing; egress/log export costs.
• Overage behavior, throttling vs billing only; ability to set hard caps with alerts.

Roadmap fitness (next 6–12 months)

• Chains and POPs to be added; MEV/private tx roadmap by chain; indexer improvements; dedicated cluster SKUs.

Side-by-side validation plan you can run in a week

Synthetic probes

Probe harness config (JSON)

Use this to drive synthetic probes across the mentioned DeFi infrastructure providers, methods, and regions. Replace placeholders with your endpoints and adjust weights to your real method mix.

{
  "version": "1.0",
  "description": "DeFi RPC provider benchmarking harness",
  "providers": [
    {
      "name": "alchemy",
      "endpoints": {
        "ethereum_mainnet": "https://eth-mainnet.g.alchemy.com/v2/ALCHEMY_KEY",
        "arbitrum_one": "https://arb-mainnet.g.alchemy.com/v2/ALCHEMY_KEY"
      }
    },
    {
      "name": "infura",
      "endpoints": {
        "ethereum_mainnet": "https://mainnet.infura.io/v3/INFURA_KEY",
        "optimism": "https://optimism-mainnet.infura.io/v3/INFURA_KEY"
      }
    },
    {
      "name": "quicknode",
      "endpoints": {
        "ethereum_mainnet": "https://example-eth.quiknode.pro/QUICKNODE_KEY/",
        "polygon_pos": "https://example-polygon.quiknode.pro/QUICKNODE_KEY/"
      }
    },
    {
      "name": "chainstack",
      "endpoints": {
        "ethereum_mainnet": "https://nd-XXXXXX.chainstacklabs.com/v1/KEY",
        "base": "https://nd-XXXXXX.chainstacklabs.com/v1/KEY"
      }
    },
    {
      "name": "blockdaemon",
      "endpoints": {
        "ethereum_mainnet": "https://svc.blockdaemon.com/ethereum/mainnet/KEY",
        "arbitrum_one": "https://svc.blockdaemon.com/arbitrum/one/KEY"
      }
    },
    {
      "name": "ankr",
      "endpoints": {
        "ethereum_mainnet": "https://rpc.ankr.com/eth/ANKR_KEY",
        "bnb": "https://rpc.ankr.com/bsc/ANKR_KEY"
      }
    },
    {
      "name": "rpc_fast",
      "endpoints": {
        "ethereum_mainnet": "https://eth-mainnet.rpcfast.com/v1/RPCFAST_KEY",
        "base": "https://base-mainnet.rpcfast.com/v1/RPCFAST_KEY"
      }
    }
  ],
  "regions": [
    { "name": "us-east-1", "cloud": "aws" },
    { "name": "us-west-1", "cloud": "aws" },
    { "name": "europe-west3", "cloud": "gcp" },
    { "name": "ap-northeast-1", "cloud": "aws" },
    { "name": "ap-southeast-1", "cloud": "gcp" }
  ],
  "workload": {
    "methods": [
      { "method": "eth_blockNumber", "weight": 0.05 },
      { "method": "eth_getBalance", "weight": 0.05, "params_template": ["$WALLET", "latest"] },
      { "method": "eth_call", "weight": 0.35, "params_template": ["$CALL_OBJ", "latest"] },
      { "method": "eth_getLogs_1h", "weight": 0.2, "method_override": "eth_getLogs", "params_template": ["$LOG_FILTER_1H"] },
      { "method": "eth_getLogs_24h", "weight": 0.1, "method_override": "eth_getLogs", "params_template": ["$LOG_FILTER_24H"] },
      { "method": "trace_block", "weight": 0.1, "chain_support": ["ethereum_mainnet"] },
      { "method": "debug_traceTransaction", "weight": 0.05, "sample_from_recent_tx": true },
      { "method": "eth_sendRawTransaction", "weight": 0.05, "signed_tx_template": "$SIGNED_TX" }
    ],
    "concurrency": {
      "steady_rps": 50,
      "per_provider_limit": 200,
      "per_region_limit": 200
    },
    "schedule": {
      "interval_seconds": 60,
      "duration_hours": 168,
      "bursts": [
        { "label": "10x_burst", "multiplier": 10, "duration_seconds": 300, "repeat_minutes": 60 },
        { "label": "100x_microburst", "multiplier": 100, "duration_seconds": 30, "repeat_minutes": 180 }
      ]
    }
  },
  "timeouts_and_retries": {
    "connect_timeout_ms": 500,
    "read_timeout_ms": 2000,
    "max_retries": 2,
    "retry_backoff_ms": 200,
    "circuit_breaker": {
      "error_rate_threshold": 0.05,
      "rolling_window_seconds": 60,
      "open_duration_seconds": 20
    }
  },
  "validation": {
    "head_lag_tolerance_blocks": 1,
    "reorg_depth_tolerance": 2,
    "response_schema_checks": true
  },
  "metrics": {
    "latency_percentiles": [50, 95, 99],
    "record_ttfb": true,
    "error_classes": true,
    "throttle_detection": { "http_429": true, "headers": ["Retry-After", "X-RateLimit-Remaining"] },
    "log_fields": ["provider", "region", "chain", "method", "status", "http_code", "ttfb_ms", "latency_ms", "resp_bytes", "block_lag", "error_type"]
  },
  "outputs": {
    "stdout": true,
    "ndjson_path": "./results/rpc_benchmark.ndjson",
    "prometheus": { "enable": true, "port": 9090 },
    "grafana_dashboards": { "export_path": "./dashboards" }
  },
  "secrets": {
    "wallets": ["0xWALLET1", "0xWALLET2"],
    "call_objects": ["$ERC20_BAL_CALL_OBJ", "$VAULT_CALL_OBJ"],
    "log_filters": {
      "1h": { "fromBlock": "$HEAD_MINUS_300", "toBlock": "latest", "address": ["$CONTRACT_ADDR"], "topics": ["$TOPIC0"] },
      "24h": { "fromBlock": "$HEAD_MINUS_7200", "toBlock": "latest", "address": ["$CONTRACT_ADDR"], "topics": ["$TOPIC0"] }
    },
    "signed_tx_samples": ["0xSIGNED_TX_SAMPLE"]
  }
}

Realistic load replay

Surge and failure drills

Acceptance thresholds (example)

Why RPC Fast?

The main reason for you to try our DeFi infrastructure service pack is that we built our service based on the analysis of other providers and are taking the best of them, filling their gaps with our expertise. 

We recommend including RPC Fast in that bake-off and evaluating it against your target chains and regions; keep whichever provider consistently meets your SLOs at the lowest operational risk and total cost.