Fresh Ink! Our investment in Scale3, an open devops and telemetry platform for web 3
Investors: Satish Dharmaraj, Urvashi Barooah
Context:
Blockchains have seen tremendous growth in the past few years. Today–even amidst a downturn–more than $2B is transacted on just the ethereum network on a daily basis. Yet, network reliability is a huge issue. Just last week, Solana had a 6 hour long outage which brought all of the DeFi and NFT activity on it to a screeching halt. And it’s not the first or the last time this will happen. Other blockchains have had similar issues. How will crypto onboard a billion users if we cannot guarantee close to 100% network uptime? Imagine being unable to check out at the grocery store because Visa or Mastercard was having an outage!
We’ve learned from web2 that you can’t have reliability without observability. That’s why Datadog, Splunk and New Relic have become indispensable for engineering teams. But observability for web3 looks different. Old assumptions don’t apply. Every protocol needs its own customized solution. Building these tools requires a deep understanding of decentralized, multi-owner networks and the unique requirements of each protocol.
Today, the most sophisticated crypto companies are shoehorning web2 observability solutions for crypto by writing custom metrics and aggregating data from multiple sources. It’s a painful process that requires a lot of developer resources, intimate knowledge about each chain and constant monitoring across Twitter, Discord, Github and other channels. Most crypto companies do not have the resources or know-how to do observability in this way. We need a better solution.
Enter Scale3:
Scale3 is a web3 infrastructure company building developer tools. Their first product is a set of observability and monitoring tools for blockchain networks and nodes. They equip crypto companies and node operators with metrics, alerts and updates to help them better manage node operations and infrastructure at scale. This is vital information needed to ensure the highest levels of performance for blockchain networks. The platform includes:
*Monitoring dashboard: Helps node operators, protocol teams, DApps and ecosystem participants get real time observability metrics into their node infrastructure
*Alerting: Real time alerts when nodes do not perform as expected
*Updates: Release monitoring to keep nodes on the latest version of the software at all times
*Network visibility: Real time feed which surfaces recommendations and useful information about the overall network, captures signals from L1s, the blockchain community and equips node operators to respond quickly to changing conditions
*Community repository: Shared knowledge base for troubleshooting nodes and infrastructure issues
Today companies are painstakingly stitching together disparate data sources to understand the health of the network. Or worse, they are operating completely blind. With Scale3, this data is aggregated in a central dashboard at the click of a button. Now, companies are able to proactively monitor network health and quickly troubleshoot issues as they come up. Scale3 is currently live on the Sui blockchain and will soon launch on Aptos, Ethereum and Solana.
Why we’re excited:
Reliability is an existential problem for blockchains. We can’t have reliability without good telemetry. The severity of the need is reflected in how quickly Scale3 has been able to sign on customers. Within a month of incorporating, they have signed their first partnership with Mysten Labs, the creator of Sui. Once Scale3 integrates with a protocol, they become the go-to telemetry platform for all node operators and DApps on top of it, which makes them incredibly hard to displace. Node operators that come to rely on Scale3 for one chain want to use them for other chains as well, which creates a flywheel.
All early stage bets are ultimately about teams. Scale3’s team has decades of experience in backend infrastructure and distributed systems across companies like Coinbase, Microsoft, Dropbox, VMWare and Consensys. Co-founders Ola and Karthik have first hand experience building node infrastructure from their time at Coinbase. This has allowed them to build and ship their first version of the platform in record time. We are thrilled to partner with this phenomenal team and lead their Seed round. If you are excited about their mission to make blockchains more reliable, sign up for early access here and check out their open roles here!
