Last month, a promising DeFi startup burn through their funding while waiting for Ethereum gas fees to drop below $50 per transaction. It has solid products, but users couldn’t afford to interact with it during network congestion. Who won’t like to avoid such situation?
This isn’t an isolated case. Thousands of projects have hit the same wall. But, Why? Because blockchain networks they were using weren’t designed for their specific needs.
Let’s understand!
While Ethereum handles billions in value daily, it treats a simple token swap the same as a complex multi-signature transaction. Everything competes for the same limited block space.
What’s the solution?
Shifting to Appchains flip this story completely. Instead of fighting for scraps on a crowded network, applications get their own dedicated blockchain infrastructure. It’s like moving from a shared apartment to your own house. You can define your rules for better living (governance), choose the right furniture (features), and decorate your home (UX) wishfully.
Let’s not forget that Axie Infinity’s Ronin network processes over 10 million transactions daily at near-zero cost. dYdX’s custom trading chain handles perpetual futures with sub-second finality. These aren’t hypothetical benefits, they’re measurable improvements that translate directly to user adoption.
Three years ago, building an appchain meant assembling a team of blockchain architects and spending months on custom development. Today’s appchain crypto infrastructure makes it as straightforward as deploying a smart contract.
Boost Throughput With Scalable Architecture Choices
Getting architecture right from day one saves months of headaches later. Here’s what actually matters for performance:
1. Pick your consensus wisely
Proof-of-Stake variants consistently outperform Proof-of-Work for throughput. PBFT works well for closed networks with known validators. Tendermint offers good Byzantine fault tolerance. Avalanche consensus can handle thousands of validators without breaking a sweat.
2. Size your validator set properly
Too few validators and you’ve got centralization concerns. Too many delays consensus procedure. Sweet spot for most applications sits between 50–150 validators. Games can get away with fewer, financial apps usually need more.
3. Tune block parameters for your use case
A high-frequency trading app needs 500ms blocks with smaller sizes. An NFT marketplace can handle 2–3 second blocks with room for larger transactions. Don’t just copy Ethereum’s 15-second blocks because that’s what you know.
4. Think geography early
Latency kills user experience faster than almost anything else. European users on validators hosted only in Asia will notice the delay. Plan regional distribution before launch, not after users start complaining.
5. Handle state growth before it becomes a problem
Transaction history accumulates fast. Implement pruning from the start — retrofitting it later often requires breaking changes that upset users and validators alike.
Harness Rollups and ZK Technology for Efficiency
Rollups aren’t magic, but they’re close. Here’s how to actually implement them without losing your mind:
1. Start with Optimistic rollups if you’re new to this
They assume transactions are valid unless proven otherwise. Way simpler to implement than ZK rollups, and you’ll still see 10–100x throughput improvements. Arbitrum and Optimism proved this approach works at scale.
2. ZK rollups when you need the performance ceiling
Zero-knowledge proofs let you batch thousands of transactions with mathematical certainty they’re valid. Complex to implement, expensive to generate proofs, but unmatched for throughput. StarkNet and zkSync show what’s possible here.
3. Mix and match based on transaction types
High-value transfers get ZK treatment for maximum security. Routine gameplay actions can use optimistic rollups for speed and cost. Most successful appchains don’t pick one, they use both where it makes sense.
4. Data availability isn’t glamorous but it’s critical
Users need to access transaction data to verify the rollup state. Ethereum mainnet works but costs add up. Celestia and EigenDA offer cheaper alternatives. Some enterprises roll their own DA layer but that’s expert-level territory.
5. Hardware acceleration pays for itself
ZK proof generation eats CPU cycles for breakfast. FPGA cards or specialized ASICs can cut proof times from minutes to seconds. Expensive upfront but essential for real-time applications.
Leverage Custom Governance for Greater Control
Governance makes or breaks appchain crypto projects. Get it wrong and you’ll spend more time managing politics than building features:
1. Quadratic voting stops whale domination
Linear voting means whoever holds the most tokens wins every vote. Quadratic voting costs scale exponentially, buying 100x the influence costs 10,000x the tokens. Gitcoin uses this successfully for grant distribution.
2. Time-lock proposals prevent governance attacks
Flash loan attacks on governance are real. Compound lost millions because proposals executed immediately. Build in 24–48 hour delays for major changes. Emergency patches get faster treatment but require higher approval thresholds.
3. Separate technical and economic decisions
Developers shouldn’t vote on token economics. Token holders shouldn’t approve smart contract upgrades they can’t read. Uniswap splits governance this way: technical changes go through developer committees, economic parameters go to token votes.
4. Multi-sig the critical stuff
Treasury funds, validator set changes, emergency stops, and anything that can kill the network needs multiple signatures. 3-of-5 works for small teams, 5-of-9 for larger organizations. Don’t make it so complex that legitimate changes get blocked.
5. Build governance that can evolve
Early-stage networks need faster decision-making than mature protocols. Start more centralized, gradually decentralize as the community grows. MakerDAO took years to transition from foundation control to full DAO governance.
Teams that nail governance early avoid the political drama that sinks otherwise solid projects. If managing governance sounds overwhelming, Instanodes handles the infrastructure side while teams focus on governance design. Their managed appchain crypto services include governance tooling, multi-sig setup, and validator coordination — basically everything except making the actual decisions.
Wrap Up
In reality, appchains went from experimental to essential faster than most people expected. Projects that seemed impossible on Ethereum mainnet are now processing millions of transactions daily on their own chains.
The tooling caught up quickly too. What used to require a team of blockchain engineers and six months of custom development now takes a few weeks with the right framework. Cosmos SDK, Polygon Edge, and Avalanche Subnets handle most of the complexity. The hard problems like consensus, networking, state management are solved smartly.
Don’t you agree that infrastructure is just the foundation? The real work happens in the design decisions. Choosing the right consensus for your use case, implementing governance that won’t implode under pressure, optimizing for your actual users instead of theoretical maximums, is the real task.
Most teams get stuck on the operational side. Running validator nodes, coordinating upgrades, and monitoring network health is a full-time job that takes focus away from product development. This is where partnering with infrastructure specialist Instanodes makes sense. We handle the 24/7 monitoring, security patches, and validator coordination so you don’t have to.
The appchain crypto space moves fast. Start ASAP!
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