Hello ChainAPI!
Introducing ChainAPI, the integration platform of the API3 ecosystem
A sufficiently decentralized oracle ecosystem needs access to a wide variety of data sources. This is a significant obstacle in the way of adoption, because many of the reasons that prevent API providers from operating their own oracle nodes also stop them from integrating their APIs to oracle nodes.
Honeycomb API Marketplace was proposed as a solution almost 2 years ago, where the marketplace undertook the effort of integrating a large number APIs to oracles. It has been recently announced that Honeycomb will cease its operations to make way for its spiritual successor, ChainAPI, which will provide API3 with abundant API integrations.
“How would this affect API integrations?” was one of the primary questions we had in mind while designing Airnode and its protocol. The result does not only provide a well-standardized way to do integrations, it will allow the API provider to integrate their API to an Airnode themselves through ChainAPI, the integration platform.
As described in the API3 whitepaper (Section 4.5, API Integrations), ChainAPI will have a user-friendly interface that will allow API providers to set up first-party oracles easily. Furthermore, this interface will be used by the API3 employees to do integrations on behalf of the API providers when necessary, greatly improving their efficiency and correctness.
In addition to providing an optimized integration experience, ChainAPI will streamline the processes of API providers and requesters interacting with the Airnode protocol (e.g., setting customized authorization policies for oracle endpoints, funding designated wallets that will fulfill requests, etc.) across multiple chains, and include a node dashboard and a marketplace in the long term. Note that Airnode and its protocol is already usable with full functionality, and ChainAPI mainly aims to improve its usability. Furthermore, integration and operation through ChainAPI is designed to not degrade the excellent security guarantees that a first-party oracle provides.
First undertaking — Integration platform
ChainAPI is an ambitious project that is broken up into four main undertakings, which can be seen on the API3 roadmap. Among these, the integration platform aspect will be built out first, as this is the most urgent need of API3 at this stage. While this is being built, the API3 employees will be doing integrations manually. You can see the proposal for further details about this undertaking.
Conclusion
It’s a great pleasure to announce that work will begin on the first ecosystem project for API3, which will be instrumental in it fulfilling the vision of becoming the DAO that will solve the API connectivity problem. Now, we not only want to see this through, but also can’t wait to witness new ecosystem projects springing up to implement the vision of the project, and go beyond it.
