GetBlock gives developers access to more than 130 blockchains, so they don't have to run the infrastructure themselves. Behind that are over 1,000 servers in three data centers and 35 to 40 billion requests a month. Some 60,000 customers count on it, five of them from the Fortune Crypto Top 100.
At that scale, one rule comes first: every customer stays online, around the clock. Everything else waits. Checking which servers still pull their weight sinks to the bottom of the list.
So GetBlock tried something new. What would happen if an AI agent worked inside the real systems, the way a senior engineer does?
Here's what happened.
Day one: the access a new engineer gets
GetBlock didn't build anything special for Ardor. No custom integrations, no test copy of the systems. The team gave it what a trusted new engineer gets on day one: a VPN login and read-only access to production.
GetBlock's CEO, Vasily Rudomanov, was looking for an agent that could run live systems the way a senior engineer does: with real access, real data, and the sense to act when something needs doing.
From there, Ardor found its own way around. It mapped the systems, learned how they fit together, and built the tools it needed for each job. Nobody had to set it up in advance.
“Ardor is insatiably curious in the best way. You ask it one question, and it surfaces three things you didn't know you needed to know.”
That's how Vasily Rudomanov sums it up.
One teammate across the whole stack
Every day, Ardor works across the same systems a senior engineer would touch, and it keeps all of them in view at once:
- On the servers, it tracks down connection problems, watches for errors and compares how each part of the fleet performs
- In the reports, it explains why two sets of numbers don't match, and answers the CEO's questions without anyone tracing the data by hand
- When several days of analytics went missing, it filled the gap and set up an hourly sync so it won't happen again
- In support, it connects the ticket systems, sorts the tickets, and shows which products, networks and countries they come from
Real software, live in production
Ardor doesn't stop at answers. In May it built SitemapHQ, a complete web app with a public page, an admin panel, search, and import and export. It took the app from requirements to a live launch, behind the same VPN.
Then someone from the content team asked for help. They had no engineering background, but they knew exactly what slowed their team down: planning and writing content for 11 channels, each in the brand's voice and by its rules.
Ardor built the tool from scratch: the screens, the server, the database and the launch. A request in plain English became a live service.
Answers for people who never open a terminal
Ardor is connected to every tool GetBlock uses to understand its own website: who visits, how they move through it, what they buy, where they came from and what brings them back.
That makes it eyes and ears for marketing, sales and business development. Want to know whether the docs help new customers get started, and what to change? Open Ardor and ask.
No Python, no SQL. No need to remember which number lives in which system, or who keeps them connected. You don't even need to know those systems exist.
In most companies, data belongs to engineering. Everyone else files a request and waits for a dashboard. At GetBlock, the marketer and the engineer ask the same Ardor, in the same plain words.
$360K a year from one open question
When you run 1,000+ servers and 40 billion requests a month, you keep spare capacity on purpose. Running out is not an option. But customers' needs shift, and some machines end up doing very little. Finding them means going through servers one by one, and the engineers are busy keeping customers online.
So a team member gave Ardor a loose request:
“Explore our infrastructure and see what could be cost-optimized.”
Ardor went through the whole fleet. It compared what each server costs with the traffic it actually serves, and took stock of the hardware.
The finance team got a ready list of servers to retire. Nobody had to put it together by hand. It cuts $360,000 a year from GetBlock's costs.
What a busy team gets
Most AI tools write code or build apps. Both are useful. Neither works where a company's live systems run.
Ardor works inside them, with the access a trusted engineer has. It fixes what it can, reports what it can't, and asks a person before anything that can't be undone.
And it isn't only for engineers. At GetBlock, someone from the content team got a production tool, and marketing gets answers straight from the data, just by asking.
The point isn't to write code faster. It's to notice what a busy team has no time to notice.