Beyond the Hyperscalers: Blockchain Decentralization Starts With Your Infrastructure

*Lili Hellriegel, our Head of Enterprise Solutions at Cherry Servers, recently sat down with Andy Pickering on the Brave New Coin Crypto Conversation podcast to discuss blockchain decentralization, digital sovereignty, the critical role of Web3 infrastructure, and why the "just use AWS" era is ending for Web3 teams. Here's what she had to say."

There's a quiet but significant shift happening in how blockchain teams think about their infrastructure. For years, the default was simple: spin up some instances on AWS or Google Cloud, move fast, and sort out the details later. Today, more and more Web3 teams are asking harder questions about where their data lives, who controls it, and whether a generic cloud instance is really the right fit for the work they're doing.

Lili has seen this from both sides. Before joining Cherry Servers as Head of Enterprise Solutions, she was Head of Infrastructure at Blockdaemon, where she built out global infrastructure, managed data center partnerships, and designed server specifications for staking and validation workloads. Working that close to crypto teams gave her a clear picture of what blockchain-focused companies actually need from their infrastructure, and what most providers fail to deliver.

"It made me laser-focused on flexibility and support," she says. "That's actually what drew me to Cherry Servers, helping teams get exactly what they need, not just what hyperscalers decide to offer."

Prefer to watch? The full conversation is also on YouTube:

#Who Cherry Servers Is

Cherry Servers has been around for over 20 years. We're a European cloud provider with data centers across Europe — and additional locations in Chicago, Singapore, and a newly opened facility in Tokyo. Although a large part of our customers are building in Web3 space, we support more traditional Web2 workloads too.

What makes us different from an AWS or Google Cloud isn't just geography, it's how we work. Every customer gets a dedicated account manager. We don't just hand over generic servers; we help architect the stack. If you have a question, you'll get a real answer fast, often from someone who has been deep in crypto infrastructure themselves.

"Every customer gets a dedicated account manager, and sometimes that's me," Lili notes. "We actually help architect their stack instead of just handing over generic servers."

#The Sovereignty Question

All the major hyperscalers like AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, are US companies. For a long time, that was treated as a neutral fact. For a growing cohort of Web3 teams, it no longer is.

Some customers come to us for straightforward compliance reasons: they need their data governed by EU law, and that means infrastructure under European jurisdiction. But compliance is only part of the picture.

"Some of our clients are here for compliance, but plenty are motivated by principle," Lili explains. "They want infrastructure that's as distributed as the chains they're building on, and that means looking beyond the US giants."

For teams building decentralized protocols, there's something philosophically uncomfortable about running critical infrastructure on a handful of centralized American cloud providers. Decentralization isn't just a product feature, it should extend to the infrastructure layer too.

#From Cloud-First to Workload-First

The "cloud-first" model works well enough for standard web applications. But Web3 workloads are different. They have specific requirements for latency, storage throughput, hardware consistency, and network performance that don't map neatly onto T-shirt-sized cloud instances.

"Hyperscalers tend to force customers into rigid boxes — one-size-fits-most solutions for web2 apps," Lili says. "But Web3 workloads are often unique. At Cherry, we let teams fully customise everything: disk, RAM, CPU, even network. That way they get exactly what fits, and stop overpaying for what they don't use."

The inflection point tends to come when a team needs better performance for less cost, or when their use case is simply too custom for generic cloud to handle well. That's when the shift from cloud-first to workload-first thinking starts to make real financial sense.

#Built for Validators and DeFi Teams

Cherry has become a serious home for validator and DeFi infrastructure across Europe, and it's not by accident.

Validator teams need near-perfect uptime, ultra-low latency, and hardware specifically tuned to the protocol they're running. They need crypto-native support staff who understand what they're actually operating. And they need the kind of response times that matter when a missed attestation window has real financial consequences.

"We've got crypto-native experts to help spec out exactly what's required. Our support's always on, and we don't charge extra for real expertise, unlike the big clouds," Lili says.

There's also the question of how teams pay. A significant share of our Web3 customers pay for their infrastructure in crypto, drawing on staking rewards or protocol treasury to cover their monthly costs. We currently accept payments across more than 30 chains.

"Crypto payments just make sense for Web3 teams, it's part of our DNA," Lili adds.

For teams whose entire operation runs on-chain, being able to pay for infrastructure the same way closes the loop in a way that genuinely matters.

#What's Coming in the Next Two Years

Lili's outlook for the near future is direct: the era of generous cloud credit programs is winding down. The hyperscaler model of handing startups six-figure credit grants as part of accelerator deals made sense in a different market. Founders today are more disciplined about runway.

"Startups will get smarter about their infrastructure spend, with more custom, runway-extending setups on bare metal. And Europe will only keep growing as a hub for decentralized infrastructure."

As cloud bills scale non-linearly with growth, the comparison between an optimised bare-metal setup and an inflating hyperscaler invoice looks increasingly one-sided. Infrastructure isn't just a cost centre, for Web3 teams especially, it's a strategic decision that shapes performance, compliance posture, cost structure, and the principles the project stands on.

#Start Building With Us

If you're running Web3 workloads and curious what a more custom infrastructure fit looks like, we'd love to talk. Explore our Web3 workloads page, check out sample server configurations, or reach out directly via Telegram, support ticket, or email.

You'll get a real answer. Quickly.

This post is based on Lili Hellriegel's conversation with Andy Pickering on the Brave New Coin Crypto Conversation podcast. Listen to the full episode here.