0%
HomeCase Studies
Element.Fi sees massive performance benefits after switching to Alchemy.

Element.Fi sees massive performance benefits after switching to Alchemy.

Element.Fi sees massive performance benefits after switching to Alchemy.

10x

Faster development cycles with Alchemy infra

26K+

Total element.fi users

50%

Reduction in latency after switching to Alchemy

Alchemy has allowed us to eliminate having to use secondary / back-up infra. Alchemy never goes down, and their uptime is super consistent. Their platform works perfectly for us.

Jonny Rhea, Co-founder & CTO, Element.Fi

About Element.Fi

Element.Fi is an open-source protocol for fixed and variable yield markets. Their flagship product is the Element Principal Token, a fixed-rate token that offers a guaranteed rate in exchange for holding the asset for a lock-up period. An Element user can exchange their cryptocurrency into a Principal Token, then after a set period, exchange it back for the original amount, plus earned interest.

An example of how Element’s Principal Tokens work
An example of how Element’s Principal Tokens work

This type of stable earning opportunity is a crucial on-ramp for more conservative investors in a nascent industry such as DeFi. The approach is paying off for the Element team: Element now has roughly $300m of trading volume on the platform with over 26,000 users. 

By heavily investing in protocol security, Element.Fi has earned a DeFi safety score of 95, an industry-wide rating that demonstrates their commitment to security and safety for their users.

These focal areas contribute to Element.Fi’s recognized stability, fostering hard earned user-trust in an otherwise oft-volatile market. As DeFi continues to evolve and grow, Element is positioned to be a stalwart player in the space, helping new users to safely deploy capital.

An example of Element's Fixed Rates user experience
An example of Element's Fixed Rates user experience

Trusting Alchemy With Their Infrastructure

Providing users with stability via fixed rates naturally demands stable infrastructure – so Element chose to partner with Alchemy as their developer platform. 

After a friend at SushiSwap recommended that Element check out Alchemy as an alternative to Infura, their existing infrastructure partner, the Element team were quick converts, finding improved reliability, latency, and “badass customer support.” 

Working with Alchemy has made Element’s development cycles 10x faster, as their engineering team can focus on their frontend product, knowing that Alchemy infra has their backend covered.

No Back-Up Infrastructure Necessary

Before partnering with Alchemy, Element consistently used a primary infrastructure provider as well as backup providers to cover uptime gaps, as needed.

However, once they started using Alchemy’s Supernode, with industry-wide superior reliability, Element realized they had no need to work with backup providers.

This meant that Alchemy’s reliability came with an added benefit: simplification. With stable infrastructure, Element has been able to grow their product to thousands of users without any major issues.

As Element's daily requests scale, they can be confident their infrastructure will grow with them. Supernode is packed with powerful features like auto-scale, an embedded scaling tool that ensures heavy usage doesn't cause dropped transactions.

Alchemy’s Infrastructure Is Blazingly Fast

Before deciding on Alchemy, Element trialed a variety of different infrastructure providers. After weeks of rigorous stress-testing, they concluded that Alchemy was the fastest infrastructure provider in the industry.

Alchemy’s latency was about half of what we previously measured with Infura. But not only is it fast. It’s reliable. Alchemy has allowed us to eliminate having to use secondary / back-up infra. They never go down, and their uptime is super consistent. It works perfectly for us.

Jonny Rhea, Co-Founder & CTO, Element.Fi
Element's Alchemy Dashboard, showcasing lightning fast responses.
Element's Alchemy Dashboard, showcasing lightning fast responses.

Element is able to deliver a user experience that’s quick and reliable, a major step-up from other protocols which can experience long transaction times and problematic performance due to latency.

Comprehensive Developer Tools

In addition to Alchemy's key performance benefits, Element chooses Alchemy because of the robust set of developer tools that are available to them through the Alchemy platform. Element’s engineering team is able to monitor requests with Alchemy’s dashboard – a tool that makes managing connections to the blockchain intuitive and visual, tracking crucial statistics like latency and daily CUs.

Element's Alchemy Dashboard, showcasing lightning fast responses.‍
Element's Alchemy Dashboard, showcasing lightning fast responses.‍

Alchemy’s tooling has recalibrated our perception of what we need from our platform partners - the tools are that good and that useful. The dashboard makes it incredibly easy to see all of our queries on the blockchain. This makes it easy to quickly triage issues reported from our community and make any frontend updates needed to resolve the problem.

Jonny Rhea, Co-Founder & CTO, Element.Fi

Element also has access to tools like Alchemy’s Explorer, which provides in-depth data about the state of their requests, with detailed error codes making debugging, when necessary, super easy.

They’re also able to see the exact JSON payload that a request returns, ensuring that their developers can easily verify the accuracy of their users’ transactions.

Alchemy's Explorer, accessible for all customers.
Alchemy's Explorer, accessible for all customers.

When we really need to dig into transactions, the explorer is extremely useful. It allows us to visualize our transactions and queries easily, providing an in-depth look into what’s happening on-chain.

Jonny Rhea, Co-Founder & CTO, Element.Fi

Human-Centric Support

Performance and tooling are crucial for Element’s performance. But, beyond those dimensions, the clincher for Element has been the “humanity of Alchemy’s customer support.”

Alchemy’s team is available for Element 24/7 – making them a crucial problem-solving partner and an extension of Element’s own engineering team. 

Alchemy’s support is genuinely available for us 24/7. There have been times where we’ve had a problem at 4am and Alchemy engineers are available for help. I assume they’re doing this for all their customers, too. I honestly don’t know how they do it.

Jonny Rhea, Co-Founder & CTO, Element.Fi

Element can trust Alchemy’s support team to resolve problems in minutes, any time of day. Every time Element interacts with Alchemy’s support team, they’re interacting with a real human on the other side who can help them think through problems and come together to find actionable solutions.

Personalized customer support sets Alchemy apart in the ecosystem, and is a major reason why Element has been able to scale their product seamlessly.

The combination of Alchemy’s performant infrastructure, diversity of platform products, and world-class team empower Element to continue innovating, scaling and driving the future of web3’s DeFi.

Alchemy is proud to support Element as they push the space forward.

FAQs

What is DeFi?

Decentralized Finance, also known as DeFi, is a subsection of the cryptocurrency industry. Unlike traditional finance, historically defined by a central intermediary, DeFi protocols enable a trustless, peer-to-peer financial system, with functionality 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.

What is Element?

Element.Fi is a fixed-rate DeFi protocol. Users are able to exchange their cryptocurrencies for a fixed rate of the underlying asset, such as USDC, ETH, and BTC. Element depositors can utilize their cryptocurrency and deposit for a fixed period of time in exchange for a set interest rate.

Through Element, users are able to get stable yield in DeFi, an important building block for the industry.

Case study page related articles background

Related products

Supernode
Supernode
Card background image

The web3 engine

The revolutionary blockchain engine that ensures infinite scalability, reliability and 100% data accuracy.

Code preview

Copied
curl https://eth-mainnet.g.alchemy.com/v2/demo \ -X POST \ -H "Content-Type: application/json" \ -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","method":"eth_gasPrice","params":[],"id":73}'
Phantom
Ethereum
Card background image

The decentralized L1

Build the future of the internet economy using Alchemy's world-class blockchain developer platform.

Code preview

Copied
// Setup: npm install @alch/alchemy-sdk const { Network, Alchemy } = require("alchemy-sdk"); // Optional Config object, but defaults to demo api-key and eth-mainnet. const settings = { apiKey: "demo", // Replace with your Alchemy API Key. network: Network.ETH_MAINNET, // Replace with your network. }; const alchemy = new Alchemy(settings); async function main() { const latestBlock = await alchemy.core.getBlockNumber(); console.log("The latest block number is", latestBlock); } main();
Faucets
Faucets
Card background image

Free testnet tokens to accelerate development

Get free testnet faucet funds for testing and developing your decentralized applications on Sepolia and Mumbai testnets.

Section background image

Build blockchain magic with Alchemy

Alchemy combines the most powerful web3 developer products and tools with resources, community and legendary support.