راه‌اندازی صرافی رمزارز و سخت‌افزار و نرم‌افزارهای مورد نیاز

What technical and operational requirements must be met to launch a cryptocurrency exchange?

This is the core question of any technical team that wants to build a secure exchange, with Low latency and Stable In this guide, we will take you step-by-step through architecture, hardware, software, networking, security, monitoring, and backup to make your system Fault tolerance to have, Always available Stay and be protected from attacks.

General architecture and design principles

Design the architecture in layers and keep each layer isolated from the other to limit errors and facilitate scalability.

• Layered separation: Gateway/API → Application (stateless) → Matching Engine (low-latency) → Order Book (in-memory + durable) → Database (persistent) → Wallet & Signing (HSM/cold) → Monitoring/Logging.
• Accessibility principle: Each layer should be deployed in at least two geographical areas (active-active or active-passive).
• Stateless principle in applications: Sessions are stored in Redis or JWT so that servers can be added and replaced.
• Network isolation: Management, API, blockchain nodes, and wallet servers should be kept in separate VLANs or VPCs.

Recommended hardware by role

Follow the minimum specifications and HA tips for each hardware role.

Matching Engine (very latency-sensitive)

• CPU: 16–64 cores High frequency (Intel Xeon / AMD EPYC).
• RAM: 128–512GB Depending on the size of the order book.
• Storage: NVMe Enterprise with high IOPS; RAID1/10 for WAL.
• Network: 10–40 Gbps With low-latency NICs (SR-IOV).
• Recommendation: Dedicated/Bare-metal server in a location close to LPs and target markets.

Database (PostgreSQL / time-series)

• CPU: 16–64 cores.
• RAM: 256–1024GB.
• Storage: NVMe Enterprise + RAID10; separate WAL and data on different disks.
• Network: 10 Gbps.
• HA: Streaming replication + Patroni + etcd/consul.

Order Book / Cache (Redis / Aerospike)

• Redis Cluster with AOF+RDB persistence; high RAM nodes and NVMe for storage nodes.

Wallet / Signing Servers

• Hot wallet: sparse, isolated, with HSM or HSM as a Service.
• Cold wallet: air-gapped or hardware wallets maintained offline.
• HSM: FIPS 140-2 Level 3 Recommended.

Gateway / API / Frontend

• CPU: 4–16 cores.
• RAM: 16–64 GB.
• Auto-scaling on cloud/VM or container.
• Load balancer: HAProxy / Nginx / Envoy.

Monitoring / Logging / SIEM

• Clustered Prometheus + Alertmanager, Grafana, EFK/ELK (Elasticsearch/Filebeat/Kibana).

Choosing software and database

Choose software based on performance, determinability, and recoverability.

• Matching engine: High-performance languages (C++ / Rust / Go) and lock-free design. Be sure to test latency percentiles (p99/p999).
• Transaction databasePostgreSQL with replication and PITR; PostgreSQL for ledger and Redis for order book in a hybrid combination.
• Blockchain nodes: One full node for each currency, running on separate networks, and RPC restrictions.
• Wallet services: Keys must be stored in the HSM and signing operations must be performed in the HSM.

Network, location and ping

Network location and topology have a direct impact on latency, availability, and resistance to attacks.

• Location: Close to liquid markets (NY, London, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Tokyo, Singapore, Chicago).
• BGP & Anycast: DNS Anycast and BGP for load balancing and latency reduction.
• Latency: Target p99 < 5ms within the datacenter; sub-1–10ms range with colocations.
• CDN: For static content and layer 7 DDoS protection; API/WS traffic typically does not traverse the CDN unless it is a secure proxy.
• Secure internal network: VLAN, ACL, and firewall between layers.

Protection against attacks (DDoS, SQLi, XSS, API abuse)

Deter attacks at multiple layers: network, application, and identity services.

DDoS

• Network layer: Layer 3/4 firewalls, SYN cookies, anti-DDoS hardware, and Scrubbing Centers.
• Application layer: WAF (ModSecurity or managed) + rate limiting.
• Company product: Anti-DDoS server and connected PoPs to absorb and repel attacks.

WAF & Rate limiting

• Implementing OWASP Top 10 rules.
• Per-IP limit on number of requests and sockets (example: limit req in Nginx/Envoy).

API authentication and security

• JWT with short expiry, OAuth2 for app management, HMAC or mutual TLS for sensitive APIs.
• Example: Enabling mutual TLS in Nginx for internal endpoints.

Practical Linux and Network Configurations

Kernel, file descriptor, and firewall settings are essential to withstand high load and prevent attacks.

Simple nftables example:

nft add table inet filter
nft add chain inet filter input { type filter hook input priority 0 \; }
nft add rule inet filter input ct state established,related accept
nft add rule inet filter input tcp dport {22,443,80} ct state new accept
nft add rule inet filter input counter drop

Kernel tuning (in /etc/sysctl.conf):

net.core.somaxconn = 65535
net.ipv4.tcp_tw_reuse = 1
net.ipv4.tcp_fin_timeout = 30
net.ipv4.tcp_syncookies = 1
net.ipv4.ip_local_port_range = 10240 65535

File descriptors and systemd:

# /etc/security/limits.conf
appuser soft nofile 65536
appuser hard nofile 200000

# systemd service snippet
[Service]
LimitNOFILE=200000

Nginx (TLS) snippet:

ssl_protocols TLSv1.2 TLSv1.3;
ssl_ciphers 'HIGH:!aNULL:!MD5';
ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on;
add_header Strict-Transport-Security 'max-age=31536000; includeSubDomains; preload;';

HAProxy health check Example:

backend api-back
  mode http
  balance roundrobin
  option httpchk GET /health
  server app1 10.0.0.1:8080 check

Key encryption and wallet management

Wallet keys and policies are among the most sensitive parts of the system and should be protected with multiple layers.

• HSM or Vault: Use HSM to sign transactions (like YubiHSM / AWS CloudHSM / Thales) and HashiCorp Vault to manage credentials.
• Hot vs Cold wallets: Hot is very limited, Cold is offline and multi-sig with secure physical storage.
• Policies: Threshold for signatures, approval workflows, and daily withdrawal limits.

Backup, Recovery, and DR

The backup plan and disaster recovery (DR) plan should be clear and tested.

• DB: Point-in-time recovery (PITR) with WAL archiving; daily base backups + WAL archiving every few minutes.
• Files and snapshots: Regular snapshots of VM/volume and offsite storage in multiple locations.
• RTO/RPO: Define (e.g. RTO = 5 minutes, RPO = 1 minute for matching engine).
• In case of disaster: Automated runbooks and playbooks with Ansible/Terraform; DR testing at least every three months.

CI/CD, testing, and code security

The deployment and testing infrastructure must be secure and reversible.

• IaC: Terraform for environments, Ansible for configuration.
• GitLab for CI with SAST, DAST, dependency scanning, container scanning pipelines.
• Canary deployments and blue/green for uninterrupted updates.
• Regular pen tests and bug bounty.

Monitoring, logging and alerting

Monitoring should be multidimensional and alerts should be actionable automatically.

• Metrics: Prometheus (system, app, DB exporters) + Grafana dashboards.
• Logging: Filebeat → Elasticsearch → Kibana; Setting up a SIEM for event analysis.
• Alerting: Alertmanager with SMS/Email/Slack messaging and automatic playbook for failover.
• Health checks: liveness/readiness for containers and external heartbeats.

Sample operational checklist (ready-to-deploy)

• Two active-active geographical areas.
• Bare-metal for matching engine in key locations.
• PostgreSQL cluster with Patroni + replica in the second region.
• Redis cluster with AOF persistence and replicas.
• HSM for signing transactions + Hot/Cold wallet policy.
• WAF + Anti-DDoS + Rate limiting.
• Monitoring + Alerting + SIEM.
• Daily snapshot + WAL archiving + Offsite encrypted backups.
• IaC + CI/CD + Canary + smoke tests.

Sample commands and short configuration

Examples of setup and configuration commands that are useful in a real environment.

Enable sysctl:

cat <<EOF | sudo tee /etc/sysctl.d/99-net.conf
net.core.somaxconn=65535
net.ipv4.tcp_tw_reuse=1
net.ipv4.tcp_fin_timeout=30
net.ipv4.tcp_syncookies=1
EOF
sudo sysctl --system

simple PostgreSQL streaming replication (example):

# On primary (postgresql.conf)
wal_level = replica
max_wal_senders = 10
archive_mode = on
archive_command = 'cp %p /var/lib/postgresql/wal_archive/%f'

# On replica (recovery.conf)
primary_conninfo = 'host=10.0.0.1 port=5432 user=replicator password=REPLICATOR_PASS'

Minimal UFW activation:

sudo ufw default deny incoming
sudo ufw allow 22/tcp proto tcp from <admin-ip>
sudo ufw allow 443/tcp
sudo ufw allow 80/tcp
sudo ufw enable

Practical tips for reducing errors and imperfections

• Monitoring latency percentiles (p50/p95/p99/p999) and setting SLA.
• Configure circuit breakers and backpressure to prevent overload.
• Regular load testing and attack testing (DDoS simulation) in the staging environment.
• Log and audit every operation that leads to a wallet or withdrawal.
• Use immutable infrastructure and reversible rollouts.

Conclusion

Launching a cryptocurrency exchange requires a multi-layered approach: Low-latency hardware For the matching engine, a recoverable database, a distributed architecture across multiple locations, secure key management with HSM, network and layered protection against attacks, and automated CI/CD, monitoring, and DR processes.

Our company with 85+ global locations, High-performance dedicated and cloud server, dedicated trading server, anti-DDoS solutions, CDN and BGP services are ready to implement, configure and support your infrastructure. For a more detailed design based on trading volume, supported currencies and business needs, a free assessment is available from the technical team.

Frequently Asked Questions