Introduction
The acronym API derives from “Application Programming Interface”, in other words, API is a set of standards that enables communication between platforms through a series of standards and protocols.
APIs are a type of “bridge” that connects applications and can be used for the most diverse types of business. It is a set of routines, protocols and tools for building software applications.
APIs are a set of standards that are part of an interface and that allow the creation of platforms in a simpler and more practical way for developers.
Through APIs, developers can create new software and applications capable of communicating with other platforms.The function of an API is, basically, to facilitate and simplify the work of developers, besides offering a standard for the creation of new platforms. Using the APIs, it is not necessary to create custom codes for each function that a program will perform, which simplifies the creation of new applications, software and platforms in general. In addition, APIs also play a key role when it comes to security, as they are also able to block access and permissions to software and hardware data that some applications cannot use.
It doesn’t matter if you are a developer, trader, or even a company that works in the crypto market, there will be always a set of APIs available that will shorten the effort required to develop any app.
What is Covalent?
The first thing that comes to many people’s minds is what does Covalent mean?
If you were a good student of Chemistry, you will remember the covalent bonds, which are formed by the sharing of electrons between atoms.
The Covalent project has this name because it aims to “connect” the current centralized world with the future decentralized world.
The first version of Covalent was built in a weekend at a distributed systems hackathon in the fall of 2017.
We can say that information is today the most valuable asset in the world. It is through data that companies draw their strategies and determine their directions. In an increasingly globalized world and with millions of data being generated in fractions of a second, Big Data has become a fundamental piece these days.
In the blockchain world, where millions of transactions take place daily, the use of APIs makes life much easier for anyone who wants to make use of the data.
Covalent is ready to handle data scaling.
Just as examples, some numbers from the Covalent platform:
- 25 billion de rich transactions indexed including every transaction since genesis.
- Over 30,000 price feeds for fiat and crypto pairs.
- More than 200,000 smart contracts available with internal data structures for querying.
- 30 seconds is the refresh rate for updating data on the platform
Although blockchain technology is open and public, access to data is difficult, especially when referring to historical data.
Covalent has as main goal to offer a complete suite of APIs (https://www.covalenthq.com/docs/api), that is still growing, easy to use and access, so that any person or company can trust the data and use it, whether for personal or commercial use.
Covalent currently provides on-chain data and analytics for the Ethereum network, but Covalent not only aims to be the central point of access to Ethereum’s blockchain data, but also aims to index all types of blockchain and provide API access to all data from these blockchains.
The Covalent API serves fresh and hot Ethereum data as a REST API.
This is the most powerful API available in the industry with features like:
✅ ENS support (like DNS, but for the blockchain)
✅ Fully decoded event logs
✅ Daily and historical token price feeds for 40,000 markets
✅ Balances / actions / historical PnL for 10 different protocols
✅ Crypto logo API for thousands of tokens
All customers interact with Covalent platform through its APIs.
Covalent platform will be an aggregator of data from several data sources, including and not restricted to nodes, chains and data feeds.
Covalent will be a large global and decentralized repository of blockchain data available for data query requests.
In order to build this complex infrastructure, Covalent comprised a team of 12 people based in Vancouver, including financial analysts, data scientists, blockchain and database engineers.
It is important to say that Covalent has a differentiated business approach:
- Enterprise focus: The richness of our APIs supports diverse use-cases like wallets, exchanges, custodians, taxation amongst many others.
- No code: We are the only no code, zero-config solution that does not require an engineer.
- DeFi SDK: A toolkit to address as-of-yet unsolved use-cases.
Covalent Use Cases
There are some use-cases that have already been built over Covalent:
- Taxes — figuring out every single transaction that can create a tax liability
- Validators — you can figure out if your share of delegated tokens are growing
- Wallets — show your users detailed stats like swap prices and slippages
- Blockchain games — show the NFTs your users have in their wallets
Covalent has also developed an app called SafeKeep (https://safekeep.app) which is a solution to get a truly comprehensive understanding of your DeFi holdings. It is an aggregator that brings information about your balances and transactions carried out in your wallet and from different platforms, such as Uniswap, Compound, Aave, Balancer among others.
In order to build this platform, Covalent will have its own token called “Covalent Query Token”, CQT, which reward validators for answering queries correctly and for meeting benchmarks, in addition to generating penalties for slow queries and malicious behavior.
Partnerships and Investors
Covalent has raised $3.1 million in a seed round that was co-led by Woodstock Fund, 1kx Capital, and Mechanism Capital. Other participating investors in the “oversubscribed” round included CoinGecko and Alameda Research, among others.
Covalent has also announced several partnerships, including Frontier, Reef Defi, CryptoSheets, Shyft, Upbots and Polkastarter.
Conclusion
Covalent is a very interesting project, made up of a qualified team and which aims to provide, through a complete and robust set of APIs, an immense amount of data from several different solutions to provide a standardized, easy-to-use blockchain data index that brings, above all, transparency, visibility and mass adoption of digital assets.
Useful Links
- Website: https://www.covalenthq.com/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/covalent_hq
- Telegram: https://t.me/CovalentHQ
- Medium: https://medium.com/@Covalent_Hq
- Blog: https://www.covalenthq.com/blog/
- GitHub: https://github.com/covalenthq
