Trade secrets: How Coinhall uses ClickHouse to power its blockchain data platform

Coinhall is an omnichain trading terminal that provides real-time price charts and aggregates swap data from 23 different blockchain networks. Founded in 2021, the platform offers comprehensive trading tools and the best possible swap rates across decentralized exchanges. To manage vast amounts of blockchain data from multiple sources, Coinhall requires top-tier performance and scalability. Speed enables real-time analytics and ensures users can make timely trading decisions, while cost-efficiency keeps operating costs low, helping the company stay competitive, allocate resources effectively, and support future growth. Coinhall co-founder and CTO Aaron Choo led a transformation of Coinhall’s data architecture in 2021, transitioning from BigQuery to ClickHouse due to performance and cost issues. After evaluating various options, ClickHouse was chosen for its superior performance, particularly in handling candlestick queries, latest-price queries, and ASOF JOIN queries. Additionally, self-hosting ClickHouse proved to be the most cost-effective option compared to other managed services. Since implementing ClickHouse, Coinhall has made several optimizations aimed at boosting speed and efficiency, including performance tuning, efficient data retrieval, and managing complex joins. The team plans to continue to optimize and expand their use of ClickHouse, leveraging even more of its features to add new trading tools, improve the user experience, and position Coinhall for growth as a data platform for years to come.