Independent Reserve

Building and operating a cryptocurrency exchange requires balancing three competing constraints:

• Security and regulatory compliance across multiple jurisdictions
• Performance and reliability during periods of market volatility
• Usability, without introducing friction that discourages active trading
  

For Independent Reserve, the challenge was maintaining user trust over time in a market defined by security breaches, regulatory scrutiny, and sudden traffic spikes. Any solution had to meet strict security expectations while remaining accessible to non-technical investors.

We worked on platform components designed to support automated trading workflows without compromising system integrity. Messaging and asynchronous processing were handled through RabbitMQ and MassTransit, allowing the platform to process trading actions reliably under load and isolate critical operations from user-facing latency.

Security decisions were treated as architectural requirements rather than add-ons. Our work supported:

• Data encryption for sensitive user and transaction data
• Two-factor authentication for account access
• Real-time activity notifications to surface suspicious behavior early
  
• Monitoring and isolation mechanisms to reduce the blast radius of failures
  

These measures were implemented alongside usability considerations to avoid excessive friction during onboarding and daily trading.

To extend platform accessibility, we contributed to the development of a Flutter-based mobile application, enabling users to monitor portfolios in real-time, execute trades securely, and access core account features on the go.

The mobile app was designed to maintain functional parity with the web platform, avoiding the common pitfall of reduced capability on mobile while preserving consistent security controls.

Independent Reserve has grown into a stable, long-running cryptocurrency exchange serving 300,000+ users across Australia, New Zealand, and international markets. The platform continues to operate reliably in a highly regulated environment, supporting active trading, portfolio management, and automated workflows.

The architectural and security-focused decisions implemented during our engagement contributed to:

• Sustained platform stability during periods of market volatility through asynchronous processing and system isolation
• High user trust, reinforced by strong authentication, encrypted data handling, and transparent account activity controls
• Expanded accessibility via a production-ready mobile application, enabling secure trading and portfolio monitoring across devices
  

Following the completion of our work, Independent Reserve has continued to evolve the platform internally. Our contribution laid a technical foundation that supported long-term operation and user confidence in a security-sensitive financial product.