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Crypto Exchange — Notes#

Functional#

  • Spot trading (and optionally margin/futures).
  • Deposits / withdrawals via on-chain.
  • Order book + matching.
  • Market data feeds.
  • KYC/AML, sanctions, travel rule.
  • Staking, savings products.

Non-functional#

  • Strict ledger correctness.
  • 99.99% trading availability.
  • Custody integrity above all.

Capacity#

  • Big exchanges: 1M+ users active daily; 10k+ matches/s peak per popular pair.
  • Many chains × many assets → many node fleets.

Schema#

  • users(id, kyc_level, country)
  • accounts(user_id, asset, balance)
  • orders(...) like trading
  • deposit_addresses(user_id, chain, addr)
  • withdrawals(id, user_id, chain, to_addr, amount, status, tx_hash)

Trade-offs#

  • Internal ledger fast; on-chain slow — accounting decoupled from blockchain confirmations.
  • Cold wallet majority = security at cost of operations friction.
  • Heavily regulated in many jurisdictions — KYC tiering.

Refs#

  • Coinbase, Binance, Kraken engineering posts.
  • "Crypto custody best practices" (Fireblocks, BitGo).
  • Chainalysis docs on travel rule.
  • ByteByteGo "Design crypto exchange".