Databases

Galxe migrates to Google Cloud AlloyDB for PostgreSQL, cutting costs by 40%

September 5, 2024

Zhongtian Wang

Head of Infrastructure, Galxe

Ivan Song

Head of Databases, Galxe

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Editor’s note: Galxe enables seamless Web3 experiences through a suite of AI, digital identity, and blockchain solutions. Its mission to lead the Web3 industry requires a scalable, reliable database — and AlloyDB for PostgreSQL checked all the boxes. After migrating from Amazon Aurora to AlloyDB, Galxe was able to cut costs by 40%. Investing in Google Cloud provides Galxe with the infrastructure needed to continue expanding its Web3 business with confidence.

Web3 is a term used to describe the next generation of internet development built on blockchain technologies. It aims to decentralize web ownership, enable transactional freedom, protect self-sovereign identity information, and more. However, as a rapidly expanding industry, Web3 faces its own challenges. The lack of, if not total absence of, user experience and unified infrastructure results in high entry barriers and onboarding friction for end users and developers alike.

With the mission to onboard the world to Web3, Galxe has developed an ecosystem of products to solve these existing challenges. Central to this ecosystem is Galxe Quest, Web3’s largest on-chain distribution platform that connects Web3 brands and communities through gamified learn-to-earn experiences. This platform is built on Galxe Identity Protocol, our permissionless self-sovereign identity infrastructure that standardizes building, verifying, and distributing on-chain credentials using Zero-Knowledge Proofs. We also launched Gravity, a Layer-1 blockchain designed for mass adoption that abstracts the technical complexities of multichain interactions, allowing developers to tap into Galxe’s 26 million users and create new Web3 products.

AlloyDB for PostgreSQL earns our trust

With over 26 million active users, Galxe Quest necessitates scalable solutions and access to significant and consistent data. AlloyDB for PostgreSQL has been instrumental in scaling the platform to meet the demands of our growing user base.

AlloyDB provides high performance for fast online transactional processing (OLTP) workloads and is fully PostgreSQL compatible, allowing us to migrate with minimal effort while also helping us lower costs. We cut database costs by 40% after migrating to AlloyDB, compared to our previous solution Amazon Aurora for PostgreSQL, which had much higher costs due to read and write operations.

We trust AlloyDB for its flexibility, near-zero downtime, and superior performance. Acting as our single source of truth, AlloyDB securely houses millions of on-chain and off-chain user data records. This enables our developers to access granular datasets for building their loyalty programs on the blockchain.

Everything we need for Web3 confidence

Galxe relies on several Google Cloud services to drive our Web3 projects. We use AlloyDB and BigQuery for data storage and analysis, depending on the needs of each workload, as well as Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) for containerized workloads. Google Cloud’s serverless Database Migration Service made it easy to set up services that replicate data continuously from Amazon Aurora to AlloyDB for minimal downtime during migration. We also used Datastream, an easy-to-use change data capture tool, which automatically reads and replicates AlloyDB data to BigQuery for analysis.

Google Cloud’s network empowers our mission to onboard the world to Web3 with global coverage, reduced latency, and robust stability provided by premium service tiers. Now, our customers around the globe can seamlessly leverage Galxe's products to explore Web3 with an unparalleled user experience. Memorystore also plays a crucial role in Galxe's architecture, providing a caching mechanism to handle the significantly higher number of read operations compared to write operations in our scenarios.

Leading the next wave of Web3 innovation

Our partnership with Google Cloud has introduced numerous benefits, providing enhanced stability and scalability while significantly reducing our costs. Google Cloud has proven to be integral to our ability to scale and serve the world’s emerging Web3 businesses. Plus, AlloyDB’s near-zero downtime for maintenance windows and machine-type scaling deliver seamless, uninterrupted service and rapid scalability to our customers, ensuring they can innovate and grow without delays.

Looking ahead, Galxe plans to use AlloyDB’s columnar engine for fast analytical query ability without any code changes. We also see huge potential to drive future growth using AI. Already, we are heavily investing in AI for its capability to empower the Web3 world and are working closely with Google Cloud to leverage its powerful AI technologies and tools.