Alchemy

Alchemy is a blockchain infrastructure and developer platform that abstracts away the operational complexity of building on public blockchains. Founded in 2017 by Nikil Viswanathan and Joe Lau—both former Google and Pinterest engineers—the company has become one of the most widely used backend platforms in Web3, sometimes described as the "AWS of Web3" for the way it lets engineering teams focus on product rather than node management, indexing, and reliability engineering.

The Problem Alchemy Solves

Running reliable blockchain infrastructure is hard. Developers who build directly against public RPC endpoints encounter rate limits, inconsistent data, dropped WebSocket connections, slow archival queries, and no observability into what is actually happening on-chain. These problems compound at scale: a DeFi protocol or NFT marketplace that relies on a self-hosted node or an underprovisioned third-party RPC will see transaction failures, stale data, and degraded user experiences at the worst possible times. Alchemy's core value proposition is eliminating that class of infrastructure problem entirely, replacing it with a managed platform that offers high availability, enhanced APIs, and developer tooling in a unified dashboard.

Core Products

Node (RPC Infrastructure): Alchemy's foundational product provides JSON-RPC access across 80+ networks through more than 500 endpoints. The platform's proprietary Cortex Engine claims 13x more throughput and 5x more reliability than alternative providers. Smart WebSockets prevent dropped connections, and built-in retry logic and gas optimization help transactions land successfully.

Data APIs: A unified API layer gives developers access to complete blockchain data—token balances, transaction history, NFT metadata, real-time prices, and portfolio information—without the need to run their own indexing infrastructure. The single API surface is designed to grow with an application rather than requiring developers to stitch together multiple providers.

Wallets: Alchemy offers smart wallet infrastructure with embedded account abstraction, enabling gasless transactions where developers can sponsor gas fees on behalf of users. This removes one of the most significant friction points in onboarding new users to blockchain applications. ERC-20 token payment options and EIP-7702 support round out the wallet feature set on EVM-compatible chains.

Rollups: For teams that need dedicated throughput and custom execution environments, Alchemy provides rollup-as-a-service with native developer tooling, allowing projects to launch their own chains and scale to millions of users.

AI Agent Infrastructure: Alchemy has invested heavily in tooling for onchain AI agents, including a CLI, an MCP server for agent-to-blockchain integrations, and support for the x402 agentic payment protocol, positioning the platform for the emerging category of autonomous onchain agents.

Solana Integration

Alchemy first expanded to Solana in 2022, launching JSON-RPC support in collaboration with leading Solana engineers. The Solana product has since grown into one of the platform's most active areas of investment.

The Solana RPC offering includes dedicated performance optimizations that Alchemy claims deliver 10x speed improvements on heavy method calls and 20x improvements on archival data retrieval compared to standard endpoints. The platform provides enhanced account data returning 50x more token account information per call, staked connections for maximum transaction landing rates, and 99.99% uptime via multi-region infrastructure.

In May 2026, Alchemy launched Solana gRPC, a managed streaming service that delivers real-time account, transaction, slot, block, and entry data via gRPC. Built as a drop-in replacement for Yellowstone-based setups, it connects to multiple upstream Solana nodes simultaneously—deduplicating data to eliminate single points of failure—and supports automatic replay on reconnect so applications can backfill missed slots without manual intervention. Benchmarks show 5–15ms latency improvements over alternatives and lower p99 latency spikes, which is meaningful for trading firms, MEV searchers, liquidation bots, and any application where execution timing matters. The service is compatible with existing Rust, TypeScript, and Go client libraries and is deployed across US East, US West, EU Central, and Asia-Pacific regions.

In May 2025, Alchemy acquired DexterLab, a Solana developer and infrastructure company that had previously powered Solana development for Google and the Solana Foundation. The acquisition was framed as a move to consolidate Solana and Ethereum development on one platform, reducing complexity for teams building across multiple networks.

In April 2026, Alchemy announced a $20 million Solana Fund offering up to $25,000 in infrastructure credits to developers building on Solana, aimed at removing early-stage infrastructure costs as a barrier to entry.

In June 2026, Alchemy joined the Solana Research Institute as a founding member alongside the Solana Foundation, Jito, R3, and Figment. The institute, founded by Angus Scott and seeded by the Solana Foundation, examines the requirements for banks, asset managers, and other regulated institutions to operate on public blockchains. Alchemy is applying its Solana technology stack within the institute's work on institutional onchain adoption.

Alchemy is also a founding node infrastructure partner for the Solana Developer Platform (SDP), the Solana Foundation's API-driven platform for enterprises and financial institutions building onchain.

Ecosystem Fit

Alchemy occupies the infrastructure layer in the Solana ecosystem rather than the application layer. It does not issue a token and does not operate as a DeFi protocol, NFT marketplace, or consumer product. Instead, it powers the backends that other applications depend on. Solana co-founder Raj Gokal described Alchemy's Solana expansion as providing "greater access to high-quality Solana infrastructure," and Phantom co-founder Francesco Agosti called it "a game changer for Phantom and any other Solana developers."

Team and Funding

Nikil Viswanathan (CEO) and Joe Lau (CTO) founded Alchemy after careers at Google and Pinterest. Guillaume Poncin serves as Alchemy's CTO for Solana infrastructure and has represented the company in Solana ecosystem discussions.

Alchemy has raised approximately $564 million in total funding. Key rounds include a $250 million Series C led by Andreessen Horowitz in October 2021 and a $200 million extension at a $10.2 billion valuation led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Silver Lake, with participation from Coatue, Addition, Pantera, and DFJ. As of mid-2026, the company employs approximately 358 people.

Security and Audits

Alchemy operates as infrastructure middleware rather than a smart contract protocol, so it does not carry the same on-chain audit surface as DeFi protocols. The platform's reliability claims center on distributed node architecture, multi-region redundancy, and uptime SLAs. No specific third-party smart contract audits are cited in publicly available documentation, consistent with Alchemy's role as an off-chain infrastructure provider.

Tokens

Alchemy does not have a native token. Access to the platform is via API keys across subscription tiers; developers building on Solana can receive up to $25,000 in infrastructure credits through the $20M Solana Fund program.