In brief
- The API is intended to make it easier for all sorts of platforms, including social media ones, to integrate NFTs.
- Alchemy envisions an era where users can bring their NFTs across different blockchains.
Many websites use an API to integrate maps from Google or Apple right onto their platform—a process much easier than coding map features on their own. Such APIs are a familiar feature of today's web, but this is not the case when it comes to the decentralized world of tokens and platforms known as Web 3.
That's why Alchemy, a crypto infrastructure startup that bills itself as "AWS for blockchain," is launching an API for a key element of Web 3: NFTs.
Many view NFTs—tokens used to demonstrate ownership over digital items—as collectibles that people buy for status or speculation. But they are also taking on important practical functions, serving as a bundle of personal attributes that users bring with them as they navigate the emerging metaverse.
It is widely expected, for instance, that people will come to use NFTs as their avatar on platforms like Twitter, both to verify their identity and to interact with various Web 3 applications.
"NFTs aren't like JPEGs. They’re more like webpages, you can put what you want on them," Nikil Viswanathan told Decrypt.
Viswanathan says Alchemy is launching the API because deploying NFT features is a challenge even for experienced developers, and the company believes that the new tool will accelerate the shift from Web 2 to Web 3. This will in turn, he says, let artists and creators avail themselves of new ways to interact with fans and make money.
The company has been working closely with Adobe, a company that made its name PDFs and design software, but that is now working on NFT tools too. Viswanathan said he couldn't disclose for now which clients will be using the new API tools, but hinted they will include social media companies.
Alchemy, whose customers include Open Sea and Dapper Labs, isn't the only infrastructure company looking to build NFT tools. Consensys, the Brooklyn-based Ethereum giant, said this week that it intends to expand its software development kits to include more services for content creators.
But while Consensys is entirely based around Ethereum, Alchemy is in the process of expanding its offerings to other blockchains, including Flow. Viswanathan says the company envisions a time when consumers will easily be able to move their NFTs not just across different places in the Metaverse but across different blockchains too.