Understanding and meeting Aptos-specific requirements
Aptos is a high-throughput blockchain processing up to 30,000 transactions per second. Achieving this efficiency demands an infrastructure with high specifications to ensure transaction processing methodology at the consensus level, requiring enterprises to build and optimize their infrastructure accordingly.
We chose to deploy a bare metal infrastructure stack for our Aptos infrastructure operations. Unlike cloud solutions, bare metal offers superior performance and control by providing direct access to next-generation CPUs and high IOPS (Input/Output Operations Per Second).
This direct hardware access and the absence of intermediaries reduce iteration cycles, allowing for faster integration and disk operations and ensuring that our systems always operate at peak efficiency.
Kiln operates two Aptos validators, each paired with a full node providing RPC endpoints and housing the databases essential to running Aptos operations. These nodes are hosted in Warsaw to enhance geographic diversity and resilience, as fewer Aptos validators are hosted in Eastern Europe compared to Western Europe.
An additional standby is hosted in Roubaix, France. It remains synchronised with the database and is ready for immediate promotion if a failover is required in case an active node fails.
Maintenance practices and failover strategy
Our failover strategy at Kiln is carefully designed to prevent harmful actions to the network, adhering to our principle of "better down than slashed." This means failover decisions are never automated but handled manually following a strict process.
This approach ensures that a failover event results in minimal reward loss for our customers with no significant impact on the Aptos network. During our planned failover tests, we noticed that a validator only misses a single checkpoint at most, which is similar to the expected downtime during upgrades.
Maintenance operations are crucial to maintaining and enhancing the network’s performance over time. We participate in regular benchmark sequences on the Aptos preview net through intense stress-testing sessions to ensure our infrastructure remains can handle peak loads.
Running Aptos enterprise-grade infrastructure requires a blend of high-performance hardware, meticulous monitoring and constant testing.
Our preference for bare metal infrastructure, strategic node deployment and robust failover strategies ensure that we provide the most reliable and efficient staking services and deliver optimal performance for our clients.
About Aptos
Aptos is a next-generation Layer 1 blockchain. Aptos' breakthrough technology and programming language, Move, are designed to evolve, improve performance and strengthen user safeguards. Please visit https://www.aptosfoundation.org for more information on the Aptos blockchain.
About Kiln
Kiln is the leading enterprise-grade staking platform, enabling institutional customers to stake assets and whitelabel staking functionality in their offerings. Kiln runs validators on all major PoS blockchains, with over $8.6 billion in crypto assets being programmatically staked and running over 4% of the Ethereum network on a multi-client, multi-cloud, and multi-region infrastructure. Kiln also provides a validator-agnostic suite of products for fully automated deployment of validators and reporting and commission management, enabling custodians, wallets, and exchanges to streamline staking operations across providers. Kiln is SOC2 Type 2 certified.
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