Web3: WatchData API Provides a Single View into Blockchains
The number of blockchains continues to grow, along with the number of transactions on each of those blockchains, which adds to the continued complexity of querying that transaction data. Much of the data remains unstructured and may point to additional off-chain data beyond the data that is stored on-chain.
One of the latest solutions to attempt to address this complexity is the WatchData Powered API from TheWatch.
TheWatch bills WatchData as a single API for Web3 developers to seamlessly access blockchains. WatchData currently supports Ethereum, Bitcoin, Binance Smart Chain, and Tron blockchains, with the recent addition of support for Polygon via its Powered API. This new API exposes a set of tools that are also compatible with any of the Ethereum Virtual Machine-based blockchains.
One of the advantages of working with the Powered API, as opposed to querying a blockchain directly, is that WatchData does the heavy lifting of formatting the blockchain data into a structured format. They also have a data verification process that makes sure the data you are querying is accurate by the time you interact with it. WatchData also adds a layer of resiliency to data analysis that might not be practical for individual developer shops because they are running multiple nodes and have layers of redundancy built in to make sure they aren’t missing critical transactions.
Interacting with WatchData Powered API
In an interview with The New Stack, Svyatoslav Dorofeev, CEO of TheWatch, explained some of the options for interacting with the WatchData Powered API. “We believe that developers should be able to use their favorite programming languages and frameworks, and we want them to feel comfortable working with our platform,” he said. Developers can use REST API (TRON API) and JSON-RPC (Bitcoin API, Ethereum API, Binance Smart Chain API, Polygon API). Soon, WatchData will get webhooks, Notifications API, get query and other ways of interaction.
When I asked Dorofeev about the process of connecting to multiple EVM-compatible blockchains from Powered API, he highlighted the simplicity, saying, “All you have to do is create an API key for one blockchain and then you can use it for Powered API. It’s really simple and makes it a lot easier for developers.”
Powered API Use Cases
WatchData highlights a number of use cases for the data they expose. For decentralized app developers, all blockchain data for each of the WatchData-supported blockchains is available, which allows flexibility for a broad variety of use cases. Analytics that don’t require real-time data is one common use case, where historical data can help inform decision-making. For NFT applications WatchData provides data around things like snapshots of all token holders at a specific moment in time or discovering which wallets have interacted with a smart contract, as well as the ability to track any ERC-20 standard tokens.
You can review all the possible use cases and learn more about the WatchData Powered API in the API documentation. TheWatch also has additional solutions for monitoring cryptocurrency transactions if you have a use case for providing virtual assets to your users.