Quicknode

December 8, 2019 — 6 min read

Access 13 chains, tools and APIs to help you build the highest-quality Web3 applications!

Started in 2017

QuickNode first launched supporting only Ethereum (ETH), running on OpenEthereum (fka Parity) client, in a single dedicated node instance, on a single cloud provider.

Today QuickNode API supports 13 chains across 26 networks (and counting!), utilizing multiple clients, across 10+ regions worldwide, 5+ cloud & bare-metal providers, with multiple middle layers to enhance performance, reliability and overall user experience.

The result is the most powerful Web3 infrastructure in the world: a highly-available, multi-cloud, geo-balanced, redundant node network.

👉 read more about our recent UI refresh!

The Magic Behind QuickNode API

QuickNode gives Web3 developers instant access to Enterprise-grade infrastructure — the same used by Coinbase, Adobe, OpenSea, Chainlink, 1inch, and many more!

We’ve spent the last 5 years learning, building, iterating, working with thousands of projects, applications and developers to create the QuickNode platform.

Accessing Ethereum, Solana, Bitcoin, Gnosis (xDai), Polygon (Matic), Fantom, Celo, Optimism, Arbitrum, Binance Chain (BSC), Avalanche(AVAX) and Algorand blockchains — across their Mainnet, Testnet, and Devnet networks — has never been easier.

Behind every QuickNode API endpoint sits a global network of nodes — globally-distributed across 10+ regions, geo-balanced, multi-cloud, highly-available & auto-scaling — at your service, on-demand.

Every request sent to your QuickNode API endpoint is intelligently routed to the nearest node cluster based on IP, ensuring lowest latency.

Highly reliable, our node network is distributed across 5+ unique cloud & bare-metal providers, in US East, West; UK; Europe; India; Singapore and Australia — with automatic failover.

Our internal monitoring systems make sure all nodes in the network serving requests are healthy, and kick out & replace nodes which are misbehaving.

We also monitor for performance, things like average latency, response time, and http response codes, to ensure every request is served quickly and reliably.

Based on network performance metrics, we automatically provision additional capacity when certain thresholds are reached, to maintain consistent performance and mitigate “noisy neighbor” effect — the network scales to meet virtually any volume, on-demand.

Need the power of 10 nodes to handle your spike in traffic? You got it! Back down to 3 nodes tomorrow? No problem!

All the core network features are baked-in to the cost of usage (take a look at pricing here) — you only pay for what you use!

QuickNode API makes the Web3 infrastructure layer transparent for you.

Simply send the traffic, and we scale to meet your needs — every request is guaranteed to be fast and served from a healthy node nearby.

All you have to do is focus on building the best version of your application, and leave the infrastructure heavy lifting to us!

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Middleware

We do several things under the hood to make QuickNode fast and reliable:

Request Routing

When you send a request to your QuickNode API endpoint, it is first routed to the nearest location based on IP.

Then, another engine takes care of routing per call type. Different node clients, configurations, and layers handle different calls.

For example, eth_call is handled differently than a debug_traceCall or a simple eth_blockNumber.

We actively benchmark clients (like Geth, Erigon, OpenEthereum, etc…) for reliability & performance, and utilize each for their benefits.

Our request routing engine not only routes for speed based on geo-location, but also by call type!

Caching & Indexing

Many requests on our network are duplicated, identical. There are certain responses which can be cached and served from memory, reducing response times by 100x!

We also keep an index of certain responses, ones which are constant or in finality.

The first time a response is issued, the node does the necessary compute and returns a response. This response is indexed and stored in a high-performance database.

Each consecutive time this same data is requested, it is served from an index, skipping the compute part and allowing for an order of magnitude faster performance & response time.

Concurrency

Unlike a single Dedicated node, QuickNode API automatically splits your request across multiple nodes in parallel. This yields significantly faster response times vs. one single node handling all the requests.

But what about data consistency?

We have logic and additional layers to address that, ensuring the data you receive is accurate and consistent!

Failover

Our team comes from over 2 decades of experience in building global networks and distributed systems. We have war stories of underwater fiber cuts, force majeure events, and hosting providers going dark (happened with AWS, Azure, GCP) .

This is why we built QuickNode with a multi-region and multi-provider mindset; not bound by any one provider or geographic region.

If we detect an issue, we can reroute the traffic to a different provider or region, on-the-fly, with minimal impact (in most cases, it’s completely transparent).

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Add-Ons

Get access to cross-client APIs like debug and trace, as well as historical data back to the genesis block — using the same endpoint!

NFT API

Build your dream NFT project faster, with the new NFT API from QuickNode. Our NFT API lets you find any NFT, verify ownership, and pull transaction history and key collection information, without sorting through individual smart contracts.

Advanced Mempool Service

QuickNode API utilizes a custom mempool service which was developed in-house, and takes advantage of the mempool data from all the nodes we run, all over the world. Instead of fetching from a single node in 1 location, we aggregate our entire network’s mempool data and serve it to you as soon as any one of our nodes spots a transaction.

Customer Service

Included with your paid QuickNode subscription is access to our team of Web3, platform, and billing experts. Get help from the community in our Discord, open a ticket for email support, or get VIP live chat via Slack and Telegram. We’ll make sure you are happy!

What about pricing?

The pricing model for QuickNode API is usage-based, pay-as-you-go (on-demand) pricing, with the best value of any Web3 provider!

With QuickNode API, you are guaranteed the best performance: every call will be fast, since the platform utilizes the entire global node network and auto-scales to meet demand.

See our Pricing page for full details!

Just starting out?

We have a knowledge-base of over 70 high-quality guides & tutorials to help you get started — from DeFi bots and NFT minting, to Vyper and Solidity — we have you covered.

Visit our Guides page or check out the API docs — come build with us!

Need help with your project or have questions? Contact us via this form, on Twitter @QuickNode, or ping us on Discord!