QUICKNODE

Auston Bunsen was a developer who kept hitting the same wall — running your own blockchain node was slow, expensive, and broken at the worst possible moments. You needed dedicated servers, constant maintenance, and deep protocol knowledge just to make one API call.

In 2017, he and Alex Nabutovsky built QuickNode with a pitch so clean it almost sounds obvious: we run the nodes, you write the app. The first version was basically a managed Ethereum node with a clean API.

Developers adopted it immediately because the alternative — doing it yourself — was genuinely painful.

Infrastructure-as-a-service with usage-based pricing. Plans start at $9 per month for hobbyists and scale to six-figure enterprise contracts for production applications.

Revenue is driven by API calls — the more active a customer's blockchain application, the more they pay. QuickNode also launched a Marketplace in 2023 that lets third-party providers sell add-ons (enhanced APIs, data products, compliance tools) on top of the platform, creating a new revenue stream beyond raw node access.

QuickNode RPC Endpoints — low-latency, high-availability access to 30+ blockchain networks. QuickNode Functions — serverless compute for on-chain logic without managing infrastructure.

QuickNode Streams — real-time blockchain data piped directly to your application or data warehouse. QuickNode Marketplace — curated add-ons including enhanced APIs, NFT data, DeFi analytics, and compliance tooling from third-party partners.

Win developers first with excellent documentation and a generous free tier, then expand to enterprise. The same playbook Twilio ran for cloud communications: make one piece of infrastructure so reliable and easy that it becomes the default.

QuickNode became the default for independent blockchain developers first. Enterprise contracts from Coinbase, OpenSea, and institutional DeFi teams followed once the community credibility was established.

Revenue is tightly coupled to Web3 market activity. When NFT trading collapsed 95% in 2022–2023, many QuickNode customers churned or reduced API usage dramatically.

The company survived, but it illustrated the core risk: your infrastructure revenue rises and falls with crypto speculation cycles. The bet is that long-term enterprise Web3 adoption grows regardless of crypto bull and bear markets.

Tiger Global, 776 (Alexis Ohanian), Ogier Fiduciary Services, Kevin Durant (35V)