Coinhako, one of Asia’s first bitcoin and crypto-asset service company’s with more than 100,000 user wallets, announced it is now enhancing its operations and infrastructure using Google Cloud.
Compared to its previous cloud provider, Coinhako can update blockchain applications faster to address protocol-based security flaws.
The company also uses built-in security features on Google Cloud such as encryption at rest by default and Cloud IAM to minimize unauthorized access to customer assets.
Speeding up resource creation on Google Kubernetes Engine
Coinhako runs more than 10 blockchain nodes on Compute Engine to speed up the validation process without a 3rd party. Nodes constantly exchange blockchain data with each other to stay up to date.
Due to size, it’s nearly impossible for consumers to store a copy of the blockchain on their mobile devices. Ethereum alone takes up 282.91GB, and blockchain size grows with each new transaction.
Apart from the trading platform, Coinhako offers a mobile application for consumers to access various cryptocurrencies at their fingertips.
This digital wallet is secured by the user’s unique blockchain address and crypto keys. Coinhako wants to rebuild legacy applications with a unified architecture as microservices applications in Kubernetes. By adopting microservices, developers can work independently on specific features and share common codes to speed up development.
Coinhako also uses Cloud SQL to manage customer data without having to build a database from scratch. Developers can easily connect to the cloud database service from applications on Google Kubernetes Engine and Compute Engine.
“Using a microservices approach on Google Kubernetes Engine, we can easily isolate security concerns between components such as user wallets from frontend services. Using a microservices approach on Google Kubernetes Engine, we can easily isolate security concerns between components such as user wallets from frontend services. We’re currently evaluating other Google Cloud products, such as Vision AI to automate the onboarding process for our customers and compliance team so that manual processes can be reduced. On top of that, there’s also the potential to weed out fraud and impersonation attempts and protect the original identity owner by running various detection and analysis algorithms on those documents. In the end, legitimate customers will be able to get onboarded faster.”
– Gerald Ng, Software Engineer (DevOps), Coinhako
Speeding up account verification with AI
As noted by Coinhako’s Gerald Ng, the company is looking into Vision AI to help customers onboard quicker. Similar to traditional financial institutions, Coinhako asks customers to provide ID cards when they open an account. Customers are allowed to trade in larger volumes if they declare more identity documents such as proof of address and facial recognition.
Right now, a compliance officer cross-checks documents with reliable data sources. It’s a manual process that’s time-consuming and labor-intensive, but Coinhako is looking to change this with Google Cloud AI and machine learning products.