Australian blockchain SaaS platform for environmental clean-up gains performance and scalability by migrating to MySQL HeatWave on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.
Introduction & Background
Rewards4Earth is an Australian company offering a rewards platform based on cryptocurrency blockchain. Its objective is to help repair environmental damage by channeling part of the proceeds to Planet Earth causes. The company’s rewards system called “Erth” works by having users create a digital wallet and link their payment cards for buying goods from participating retailers. Businesses are incentivized to join through access to free marketing tools within the platform, along with the ability to meet their environmental, social, and governance (ESG) obligations.
For every dollar spent, shoppers are rewarded on 3% of the transaction with Erth Points split four ways between the customer; their nominated club, church, or charity; the Rewards4Earth Foundation; and the company. The company adds an additional incentive for retailers by pay-per-sale, not pay-per-click. The Foundation supports numerous ‘Planet Earth’ projects including plastic clean-up, ocean rejuvenation, endangered species preservation, clean energy technology, reforestation, and reduction of nighttime CO2 emissions.
Business Challenges & Goals
Initially, Rewards4Earth operated a monolithic architecture that obstructed efficient business operations. It later moved to an internet service provider that failed to support the architecture required for its innovative rewards system.
In 2022, in need of much greater compute power and availability, it decided to migrate its widely dispersed operations to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), consolidating all databases onto MySQL HeatWave.
Business Results & Metrics
By migrating to MySQL HeatWave on OCI, the company increased performance and attained the ability to scale up instantly as its ESG platform gained traction. Downloads of its mobile Support App and Business App have doubled. The move eliminated the need to spend money on bigger machines, larger processors, or additional clusters in order to keep up with demand.
Migration to OCI has done away with downtime, rebooting of servers and resolving conflicts with customers over transactions not being executed. Customer satisfaction has soared since the company migrated to MySQL HeatWave.
Rewards4Earth has secured its crypto blockchain transaction flow by harnessing an OCI Container Engine for Kubernetes (OCE) node to handle the backend Application Programming Interface (API) that communicates with the node, tracks transactions, and makes them readable for users and businesses. The blockchain API guarantees traceability for all participating in the cryptocurrency rewards system, complying with taxation regulations and bringing real-time visibility into payments.
Rewards4Earth now rests assured of top blockchain performance by deploying MySQL HeatWave in production and development environments. Kubernetes, with its ability to manage and scale containerized workloads across multiple nodes, delivers higher transaction performance to the company’s 5,000 users, 300 business clients, and 200 registered sports clubs, charities, and churches.
With MySQL HeatWave running on the high availability OCI platform, the company now has a storage solution for data collected from mobile apps on user devices. OCI Block Storage absorbs the ever-growing volume of transactions and wallet addresses and is used for analyzing the flow of rewards money, matching retailers to users, and for insights into product development.
The API also allows for configurations saved on the MySQL HeatWave database to make live changes on the Erth Points app, where switching on or off fields on the database will activate or deactivate features on the app, thus automating previously manual and time-consuming tasks.
Rewards4Earth acknowledges the Oracle Partner Network for introducing it to companies that have helped it tackle previously difficult issues, such as ways of tracking credit card transactions. Erth operates with data from the Visa/MasterCard/EFTPOS payment gateway where user purchases are automatically rewarded through an integrated third-party interface.
Why MySQL HeatWave?
The company had used MySQL database previously but had suffered from lack of performance with its ISP provider. Comparing that provider with OCI, it found better performance for a far lower cost, with superior support and advice.
“Oracle presented a very strong proposition, including a remarkable support structure that I have never before seen in a major player. Oracle provides not only technical support, but also became deeply involved in the development of the product, leading to enormously improved client experience,” said Matias Medrano.
Next Steps
Rewards4Earth is planning to further use MySQL HeatWave for its analytical prowess. Its dedicated team of reporting specialists intends to replace Metabase as a dashboard tool by using HeatWave for exploring, visualizing, reporting, and publishing. The objective is to provide retailers, users, charities, and itself with value-add insight into their transactions and the ultimate environmental impact.