Ledger rebuilds its storefront for the volatility of Web3

Crypto markets move on sentiment, news, and the occasional celebrity sighting—like the rapper Gunna wearing a diamond-encrusted Ledger hardware wallet at the Met Gala. For Ledger, a leading hardware wallet provider, such moments can send web traffic from 1-5 million monthly users into sudden, unpredictable spikes. The company realized its ecommerce infrastructure needed to be as resilient as the physical devices it sells.

Gunna wearing a diamond-encrusted Ledger at the Met Gala sparks demand for Ledger wallets.

Why Shopify Liquid wasn't enough

Ledger's original ecommerce site ran on a heavily customized Shopify storefront. The team found Shopify's Liquid templating engine limiting in several key ways:

  • No isomorphic code: Liquid prevented running shared code across client and server, fragmenting the tech stack and blocking component reuse.
  • Weak CI/CD support: Engineering best practices like testing, linting, functional programming, and code standards were difficult to implement.
  • Poor review environments: Setting up isolated testing environments for pull requests was cumbersome, reducing confidence before production releases.

To extend functionality beyond Shopify's native capabilities, Ledger ran supporting microservices as AWS Lambda functions. These handled secure interactions outside the Shopify ecosystem—including Web3 login for token gating—and acted as backend-for-frontend (BFF) layers, transforming data for the client. While functional, keeping these services in separate repositories made synchronizing releases across the codebase difficult.

"In Web3, two weeks is like a year. We need to be able to ship now, not later."

Dominic Green, Director of Engineering

Adopting Next.js and Vercel

Ledger moved its online store and critical web applications to Next.js on Vercel, adopting a serverless-first architecture. This gave developers ownership of the full production pipeline without managing Terraform or GitHub Actions. Next.js enabled isomorphic code, unified the tech stack, and allowed seamless component reuse.

The Vercel ecosystem now powers several distinct application types at Ledger:

  • Headless ecommerce storefront: Uses server-side rendering (SSR) for fast page loads, NextAuth.js for authentication, and API routes as the BFF to handle data fetching and business logic.
  • Headless applications: Decentralized applications (DApps) run within Ledger's native app discover section. Quest, a Web3 education project, uses Vercel for dynamic content generation and NFT minting, recording 76,000 completed quests and NFTs.
  • Unified API infrastructure: Pure API services on Vercel power the configuration engine for Ledger's native apps, consistently handling 6-7 million daily requests for a global user base.

Since the switch, Ledger operates with a production-first mindset: new projects start on Vercel from day one. Git push triggers deployments, and the team configures deployment protection and feature flags to control rollout timing.

Ledger handles the unpredictable world of crypto with technical infrastructure as resilient and secure as their hardware products.

Measured improvements

Ledger evaluated Vercel against a comparable AWS setup and found Vercel's edge functions reduced latency and improved load times. Developer feedback also favored Vercel for its interface and simpler deployment process, proving more cost-effective than replicating the architecture on AWS. The results after migrating:

  • 100x increase in release frequency: Releases went from 1-2 per two weeks to over 100.
  • 67% reduction in page load time: Average load times dropped from 2.6 seconds to under 0.93 seconds.
  • 13% improvement in bounce rates: Higher customer engagement and sales followed.
  • Better collaboration: Preview Deployments speed up development and approval across teams.

Ledger also gained full control over its development environment—setting up testing environments and enforcing consistent code standards, which materially improved the developer experience.

Stability in an unstable market

Vercel's scalable, security-by-default infrastructure lets Ledger handle the crypto market's volatility without degrading the user experience. The serverless-first platform, combined with deployment control and reproducible environments, gives Ledger the technical foundation to match the resilience it builds into its hardware.

"At Ledger, stability is key. Everything went smoothly thanks to our technical choices and architecture."

Dominic Green, Director of Engineering