In the early days of computer science more than 40 years ago, the earliest API (application programming interface) appeared to enable data sharing and exchange between different applications; with the popularization of the Internet and cloud, API has gradually become ubiquitous.
Today in the Web3 field, when most projects and institutions begin to focus on data and application innovation, APIs are becoming more and more important. When communicating with Victor, the product manager of OKLink, he also said that "whether it is a blockchain browser or an on-chain data service provider, APIs are indispensable."
1. Why are APIs “indispensable”?
More and more people are trying to integrate AI products such as ChatGPT into their daily office routines for brainstorming, summarizing texts, searching for translations, or writing emails. All of these are inseparable from APIs: like "AI technology amplifiers", APIs allow complex AI technologies to be quickly integrated into their own applications by more developers and organizations, and also allow users to use AI more easily, thereby promoting the widespread adoption and explosive growth of technology.
From this perspective, many AI applications we see today are actually re-creations based on APIs. After all, not all institutions have the ability to start research from scratch, but with APIs, everyone has the opportunity to participate in the exploration and practice of more AI applications.
Domestic and foreign giants such as OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Baidu have now opened up a variety of AI API interfaces and are competing fiercely around APIs. Because behind the API is the ecosystem: whoever's API can be selected and used by more institutions and developers will have a greater advantage in future competition.
In the Web3 world, APIs cannot be ignored either, especially in the field of Web3 data. Although on-chain data is theoretically open, transparent and accessible to everyone, it is often difficult to obtain directly. Especially when applications such as wallets or NFTs require data from multiple blockchain networks, the situation becomes more complicated, because these data structures and output formats are different, and they must meet different API interface specifications to repeatedly call data, which is a huge and complicated workload.
However, for most Dapp and crypto application developers, it is necessary to call a large amount of on-chain data when building product front-ends and providing services. From building nodes to data screening to successfully obtaining the required data, each step takes a lot of time. If there is a good API that can solve the above problems, it will undoubtedly free users and developers from the massive amount of on-chain data and solve the data problems faced by many companies and brands when entering the Web3 market. API can be regarded as an enabling technology hidden under the surface of the blockchain that truly promotes the construction of the Web3 ecosystem.
Nowadays, many organizations providing blockchain data API services are emerging in the Web3 market, mainly blockchain browsers and on-chain data service providers. Taking OKLink's OpenAPI as an example, it currently supports block data from 40+ mainstream public chains and provides token price data from 200+ blockchain networks, covering more than 7 million tokens and NFTs, as well as comprehensive data from popular protocols such as runes, BRC20, and ARC20. "More importantly, we use an integrated API interface design. Users only need to use one API to get all the data from 40+ chains in one stop," said Victor.
2. What is the use of data API in the Web3 field?
After obtaining the on-chain data through the API, what can we do with it? Many people are not clear. In fact, this data is playing a role in many public chains, wallets, Dapps, and security-related Web3 projects and platforms.
Meme narratives have become popular recently, and Sui, as the most popular L1 public chain, has also attracted widespread attention. If a wallet wants to integrate Sui into its own products and support data query and retrieval of popular Meme coins, what should it do?
The most direct way is of course to obtain Sui chain data by building nodes, but this will incur costs in terms of self-built nodes, synchronized blocks, data storage, and operation and maintenance. In comparison, using OKLink to provide API services is a lighter and more efficient option. Developers can quickly obtain data in multiple dimensions such as transactions, addresses, and tokens through simple API calls, and can track and visualize transaction data of specific wallet addresses to meet the market needs of users.
Media or on-chain analysts can also obtain data through APIs and analyze specific data dimensions according to their needs, thereby obtaining more accurate and reliable on-chain information for their professional work and investment decisions. Many Web3 markets and platforms can use blockchain data APIs to obtain and update on-chain data in real time and visualize it on the front end of the platform. Therefore, although we often cannot directly perceive the existence of on-chain data APIs, in fact, we have more or less used or come into contact with related products and services.
In the future, more and more brands and companies will try to build Web3 applications or platforms, whether starting from scratch or upgrading existing technologies. Using blockchain data APIs will make these tasks easier. APIs will also accompany the development and maturity of these applications, making on-chain data ubiquitous in the Web3 world.
