How Interface saved over 100 hours in engineering labor with SimpleHash

Interface is the mobile companion for your Ethereum journey. The app allows users to follow wallets and view activity in a single feed, import social graphs and find new connections, and discover new opportunities happening on-chain. Founded by the team at Interface Labs, this communal app fuels their mission of democratizing Web3 access. 

Challenge

NFT media indexing is crucial — but costly to execute in-house

As Interface brought their crowdfunded social platform to life, they prioritized an elevated and seamless customer experience. To make this a reality, they would have to provide users with accurate, reliable, and instant access to both their own wallets and the wallets on their communal activity feeds. 

According to Nikita Kudryavstev, Co-Founder of Interface Labs, the team’s ability to index, decode, and process chain data in-house is central to their value prop and day-to-day business. However, processing and storing raw content, such as images, audio, and videos, proved to be more challenging and required niche expertise. So, they set out to find an API provider who could assist with: 

1. Cost inefficiency — An in-house build would take tremendous engineering firepower and cost far more than simply purchasing a turnkey solution. This doesn’t even include the outsized monthly costs (roughly $30,000) of storage. 

2. Resource allocation — Instead of spending vital engineering resources on integrations, Nikita strongly preferred that Interface invest in their core product offering. 

The Interface team tested out comparable API solutions for media needs, but found these ultimately were not scalable in back-end maintenance. Eventually, their search led them to SimpleHash. 

Solution

SimpleHash provided the multi-chain coverage and sophisticated media support that Interface needed from day one. Below, Nikita highlights three of our solution’s game-changing benefits: 

Benefit #1: Comprehensive support for complex file formats

SimpleHash’s API seamlessly indexes various media formats— from podcasts to 3D images— in the Interface app, ensuring minimal delay for users. Plus, their team looks forward to expanding usage of SimpleHash in the near future to support even more complex holdings. 

Benefit #2: Swift turnaround & client support

In Nikita’s words, SimpleHash maintains an “extremely tight feedback loop.” For example, he once alerted our team about a technical snag, so we troubleshot and resolved the issue within 30 minutes. That level of attention and responsiveness has led to two critical benefits: 

1. Interface has felt like the valued customer they are since day one. 

2. SimpleHash clearly values transparent communication and implementing client feedback — signs of a promising long-term provider in tech. 

Benefit #3: Fair, transparent pricing

SimpleHash designs our pricing model for the utmost convenience of our customers — it’s intuitive and rarely requires calculations. Take it from the Interface team: According to Nikita, their plan impressively covers all data infrastructure needs at a reasonable price point for the industry. 

“If something doesn't work, we ping the SimpleHash team, and they fix everything immediately. It’s such a fast turnaround. It’s nice to see them genuinely value user feedback and communicate straightaway.” 

Results

Interface can focus resources on what really matters: their core product

Before SimpleHash, Interface had plans to pause usual engineering efforts for at least a month to develop media indexing infrastructure. Now, after partnering with SimpleHash, Interface can concentrate on refining their core product instead of grappling with SRM and NFT data infrastructure. 

Here are some impressive results of the partnership so far: 

• Over $360,000 saved annually by not having to pay for media storage
• Over 100 hours saved in engineering and developer resources

Beyond the numbers, Nikita emphasizes the peace of mind that SimpleHash has brought to his team. Looking forward, our API slots conveniently into Interface’s growth roadmap. They already have plans to launch multiple features that will delight their user base — and each one is seamlessly enabled by SimpleHash.