Chainlink, a Web 3 services platform, is launching a self-service, serverless platform to help developers connect smart contracts to their decentralized applications (dApps) or any Web2.0 API, the company announced today. As told to TechCrunch.
The new platform, Chainlink Functions, lets builders run custom computations on Web 2.0 APIs in minutes through their network, Kamal Al-Mujahid, chief product officer at Chainlink Labs, told TechCrunch.
“Our goal is to enable developers to combine the best of web3 smart contracts with the power of web 2.0 APIs,” said Al-Mujahid. “What this creates is a huge opportunity to build apps that combine the best of smart contracts and Web 2.0.”
Chainlink is known for its Ethereum-focused blockchain that powers the Oracle Network to power smart contracts. Basically, it combines on-chain data with external systems to enable smart contracts to execute transactions based on real-world inputs and outputs. The platform has enabled more than $7 trillion in transactions since mid-February, according to its website.
Today, about a few hundred thousand developers are building a variety of applications on blockchain, but there are about 30 million developers in the world in total, Al-Mujahid noted.
Chainlink Functions hopes to be the bridge between the two parties for mass adoption. “Web 3 won’t be a binary thing. I’ve seen that in AI,” he said. “The path to mass adoption was making it easier to embed AI into your apps. It’s the same with Web 3. You don’t need to build your entire app on-chain. It’s going to be a spectrum. : part smart contract; part Web 2.0 APIs”
In general, there is a growing demand to integrate blockchain technology with more traditional models and software such as SaaS or APIs, but there are limited ways for dApps to integrate with them.
“Web 3 developers are limited in what smart contracts can do, because they can’t access Web 2.0 APIs,” Al-Mujahid said. “And Web 2.0 developers are interested in building new services with Web 3 properties, but they don’t want to rebuild their tools and infrastructure.”
This new platform also supports more widely used programming languages such as JavaScript so that developers who are new to web3 can jump into the space. It will also provide integration to Amazon Web Services (AWS), Meta and others.
“It enables millions of developers who use AWS and Meta APIs to build Web 3 apps,” he added. “This will enable developers to explore new use cases and impact new industries much faster.”
For example, Web 3 developers using the platform can integrate with AWS Data Exchange and AWS Lambda and access datasets through their marketplace, which can expand opportunities for their dApps. And can use cases.
For example with Meta, web3 developers can use Chainlink Functions to connect social media activities and small e-commerce businesses with smart contracts and automatically trigger on-chain actions based on off-chain activities. are
“Smart contracts allow developers to create services that are decentralized and secure,” Al-Mujahid said. “Services that, unlike centralized platforms, are authentic to their users because they cannot be shut down or change the rules of the game unilaterally. Services that store and transfer billions of dollars of value. But these services can’t have real-world impact if they can’t connect to Web2 data or services.
The platform’s serverless nature also means that developers can “stop worrying about managing and securing the infrastructure that their code will run on,” Al-Majahid said.
“All they have to do is write a few lines of code in JavaScript and it runs automatically on the Chainlink infrastructure,” he added. “We removed all that complexity to let developers focus on their business logic. This is exactly what cloud services like AWS Lambda and Google Cloud Functions have done for cloud developers.
The platform is currently in private beta mode on the Ethereum and Polygon testnets. Chainlink plans to expand its functionality to more blockchains, add new integrations and tools, and launch on the mainnet “as soon as possible,” Al-Mujahid said.