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We live in times of change, in which technology is causing a real revolution in companies’ lives. Anyone who thinks solutions found to improve processes—especially in IT—are just another fad is mistaken, and may lose time and money with that mindset.

New IT applications appear all the time, and keeping up with this movement is one of the best ways to help your company grow. One of the trends of the moment, for example, is blockchain APIs. To understand their role, we should first discuss what a blockchain really is.

Blockchain is a distributed ledger—a chain of records shared across many nodes—whose main purpose is to create a global index in a given market.

In other words, it’s a way to record all transactions and exchanges of those who are part of the system in blocks, like a gigantic virtual ledger. These blocks are encrypted, and everyone in the system has access to the cryptographic proofs.

That way, anyone can access the data without knowing exactly where its “root” is, since everything is encrypted. This ensures the security of the information shared within the network.

Blockchain technology is a solution that allows all kinds of transactions and exchanges—not only cash or Bitcoins—to be carried out with more security, agility, and without third-party intermediaries. In Brazil, that often means “without commissions or fees”.

Although blockchain became widely known through the development and adoption of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, it can also be used in many IT implementations, such as the Internet of Things.

Blockchain APIs: a connectivity system

One of blockchain’s strongest elements is that it is entirely driven by the concept of trust. Each interaction on the blockchain verifies transactions and depends on the consensus of all blocks to track a decentralized activity.

Just like blockchain, the world of APIs is also driven by trust as a key concept—which is why blockchain can be an excellent connectivity element for applying APIs.

As we’ve said here on the blog, an API is a set of routines and programming standards for accessing a software application or web-based platform. In general, an API is a simplified and standardized interface that provides developers with a method for building applications that communicate internally.

APIs are usually created with an open standard and freely available documentation.

Google Maps is a great example. Through its original code, countless sites and apps use Google Maps data, adapting it in the best way to fit their service.

API and blockchain interactions

A lot has been said about the sharing economy, with successful examples such as Airbnb, Uber, and eBay. But gradually, the enthusiasm around the disruptive possibilities of these companies weakened due to reports of poor working conditions and fears of monopolies.

A true sharing economy is one in which individuals and companies are empowered by technology to share their data—and, if possible, receive payment for it.

You might have a small weather station in your backyard. Many people could benefit from the information produced there and might even pay to obtain it, as long as they could trust the accuracy of the data.

With APIs on blockchain, this is possible.

You can provide these fully reliable data—once verified over time on a blockchain—to a third party that would aggregate them into its API independently.

With that, companies in the clothing industry, for example, could consume these data to decide how much winter or summer clothing should be produced to meet demand, without generating unnecessary inventory.

There are many ways to use APIs on blockchain and make results take off—as long as you have a team prepared for this innovation.

If you want to learn more, contact X-Apps!

Learn more:

- APIs and microservices: the reinvention of technology

- Understanding the Angular framework

- What we learned at Agrotech Conference?