Who CoinGecko is
CoinGecko is a crypto data aggregator founded in 2014 by TM Lee and Bobby Ong. It tracks prices, trading volume and market capitalisation for coins across centralised exchanges and, through GeckoTerminal, prices and trades on decentralised exchanges. Its Trust Score, introduced in 2019, was built to counter fake exchange volume.
It describes itself as independent, and its API delivers the data behind its website and GeckoTerminal by REST, WebSocket and webhooks. That breadth, from major coins to new on-chain tokens, is why it is one of the crypto data sources our market data module connects to.
What it does in your platform
Market data
Supplies prices, market capitalisation and chart history for a wide range of coins, and on-chain prices for tokens that trade on decentralised exchanges. The module checks them against your other sources and publishes one price per asset to your apps and charts.
How the connection works
One connector in the market data module talks to CoinGecko's API: REST for prices and history, a WebSocket for live updates, and webhooks for changes to a coin's details. The API key stays in the platform's secrets, as CoinGecko itself advises.
Assets are mapped
Each asset you list is tied to its CoinGecko coin ID or, for an on-chain token, to its network and contract address.
History loads
OHLC and market chart history from the REST API back the candles, so a chart has data from its first view.
Live prices stream
A WebSocket subscription pushes coin prices, and on-chain prices for tokens that trade on decentralised exchanges, as they update.
Prices are checked
Each update is filtered and compared with your other sources before one price per asset goes out.
A coin changes
When a coin rebrands, changes ticker or moves to a new contract, a signed webhook tells the platform, and the change shows up in the backoffice.
Silence is caught
If updates stop, prices fail over to the next source, and a stale asset is flagged instead of showing an old number.
Next to other providers
CoinGecko's strength is breadth. The module can pair it with Kaiko or exchange feeds for the most traded pairs and let CoinGecko cover the long tail of tokens, choosing which source leads asset by asset. When one source goes quiet, prices fail over to the next, and where your own order books are liquid, their prices lead.
The prices belong to the module, not to the vendor. Adding a source next to CoinGecko, or replacing it later, does not change your apps.
When CoinGecko fits best
A strong fit when
- You list many tokens, including newer ones that trade mostly on decentralised exchanges.
- You want prices, market capitalisation and chart history from one API.
- You want to hear when a coin rebrands or migrates, rather than find out from a broken chart.
Also worth a look
- Kaiko, when the assets you hold or report on need reference rates built for valuation.
- CoinMarketCap, another aggregator in the module, as a second source for the same coins.
How we get you live
The contract
We help you get your CoinGecko account and contract in place, covering the assets and live data your platform needs.
The asset map
We tie each asset you list to its CoinGecko ID or token address with you, and set which source leads for each one.
The keys
The API key and the webhook signing secret go into your platform's secrets and nowhere else, so every webhook is proven to come from CoinGecko.
A full test run
The feed runs in staging against your asset list, with the tick filters and failover on, before any price reaches a customer.
