Founded in 2014, Kaiko is a leading source of cryptocurrency market data with 200+ enterprise clients with global connectivity to real-time and historical data feeds across the world’s leading centralized and decentralized cryptocurrency exchanges.

Kaiko needed a solution that would provide their clients with high-quality, real-time data on CME Group Cryptocurrency futures and options.

CME Group’s rapid rise in volume and market share for Crypto derivatives, particularly amongst institutional clients, has led to high demand for CME Group Crypto data. As a B2B data provider with clients around the globe, Kaiko must be at the forefront of institutional trends.

The core value Kaiko provides their clients is serving as a single source for all cryptocurrency market data, which massively reduces operational workflows for their clients, ensuring they only need to integrate with one provider for all of their data needs.

Furthermore, high-quality and transparent real-time crypto data is extremely important for Kaiko’s enterprise clients as it helps them make actionable decisions for trading.

Kaiko needed a flexible, scalable solution that would seamlessly integrate with their current technology stack.

By connecting directly with CME Group’s WebSocket API, Kaiko was able to guarantee high-quality, real-time CME Group Crypto data feeds to their clients, thus enhancing their crypto derivatives coverage.

Now, by adding CME Group Crypto data, Kaiko can offer clients a consolidated streaming channel, giving them a 360-degree view of crypto market activity. Their clients prioritize liquidity and coverage when selecting their providers, and by adding CME Group, they can guarantee a more comprehensive offering.

Kaiko’s integration with CME Group’s real-time futures and options API was smooth and straightforward. Their familiarity with WebSocket and JSON-formatted data enabled them to optimize data consumption within their system with ease. Moreover, the API’s scalability enables Kaiko to accompany institutions in this major industry transition toward crypto trading.

With real-time data via the WebSocket API, Kaiko only needs to pay for what they consume ($23/GB billed monthly), therefore they can choose which CME Group Crypto products to subscribe to, based on customer demand. WebSocket also allows clients to connect to all or just one CME Group product depending on what they need, so they don’t have to consume a whole channel and parse out unneeded data products.

Kaiko is now redistributing CME Group data to their enterprise clients, expanding access to transparent and quality data feeds.

"CME Group occupies a central role as a top derivatives marketplace, rendering its data essential to our comprehensive offering,” said Ambre Soubiran, CEO of Kaiko. “Broadening our coverage helps us cater to the growing demand among financial institutions for high-quality data from one of the largest derivatives exchanges in the industry.”

Kaiko chose to use WebSocket API with JSON because it’s a technology widely used across cryptocurrency exchanges. It helps them handle and distribute real-time data effectively and securely to their clients.

WebSocket over WSS ensures data security by encrypting it, and it offers flexibility in handling data while ensuring scalability and compatibility with different systems.

Although some exchanges have proposed using SBE (FIX binary data format), it hasn't been fully adopted in the cryptocurrency industry, so CME Group’s WebSocket API with JSON data better met Kaiko’s data quality, ease of use, security and scalability needs.

Kaiko is consuming two types of data: reference data and real-time market data.

For reference data, Kaiko uses the CME Reference Data REST API to retrieve the data and all related information.

For real-time market data, Kaiko uses WebSocket, which lets them receive event-driven updates instantly. This means they don't have to keep asking CME Group for updates; they simply receive them as they occur.

Regardless of which method they use, Kaiko needs to adhere to the OAuth 2.0 protocol to access the data. Before consuming production data, Kaiko built the integration in CME Group’s staging environment (NR/CERT), and then passed the required CME Group certification. This allowed Kaiko to test their real-time data connection and ensure reliability, even at peak volumes.