How can we reach the promise of a blockchain-enabled future if we can’t use the existing $2.2 Trillion market of centralized APIs that currently power the world of software?
At AIKON, we are part of a global community working night and day to make the decentralized vision of a fair and equal-access economy a reality.
Right now, the world of blockchain and cryptocurrency is moving at lightning speed with first-movers racing to create decentralized versions of entire industries and economies. The thing is — every single one of them are going to require APIs to be successful. (In fact, try finding any software company that doesn’t use APIs … If you find one, let us know in our telegram channel and we’ll send you a prize 😉
This begs the question: how do we build a decentralized world without needing to rebuild the entire world of software from scratch in order to do so? In short: AIKON’s ORE Protocol makes it so the world doesn’t have to.
Our focus is two-fold: enable traditional APIs to work in the decentralized economy, and provide a decentralized API marketplace where anyone can access decentralized services in an incentive-based ecosystem that aligns with the fair and open developer community ethos.
Fulfilling the promise of decentralization on blockchain
Introducing dServices:
Developers can now bridge the gap to blockchain and easily transform APIs into new decentralized services, or “dServices” — the building blocks of the future.
A dService is any service that works in a decentralized system, either transformed using the ORE protocol or built using blockchain from the beginning.
As the internet shifts to blockchain — dServices allow us to build this new decentralized world without needing to reinvent the wheel for every piece of code.
dServices:
- Transition existing APIs into usable building blocks for the decentralized future
- Make blockchain more easily accessible to developers
- Remove need to build existing products from scratch
- Help dApp developers build more fully decentralized apps
- Increase interoperability between services on and off blockchain
- Allow companies and individuals to get paid easily in cryptocurrency
- Reduce need to purchase and manage multiple tokens
For the non-initiated: think about it this way — green building and architecture is a useful comparison to our pursuit of building the decentralized world.
The gold standard in green building is a completely carbon-neutral, and sustainable build, designed with any number of different kinds of products/services that contribute to sustainability. There’s no one true path to sustainability: different levers make sense for different projects — you might choose a combination of solar panels, grey water remediation, and insulation for the desert, but a completely different combination for building a factory in a cold climate.
To this end, architects, communities and the world have come together to build a set of standards — the LEED certification program — to help shepherd the building industry into a more carbon neutral, sustainable world.
The same concept is true in software: typically we build new products and services by coming up with an innovative new idea, and choosing the best combinations of existing libraries, tools, and services in new combinations to build our products.
In a decentralized world, developers need to be able to choose from the best dServices available to build a decentralized application and business — but the entire world of APIs have not yet become blockchain-enabled, so developers are missing critical services they require.
Let’s take this model one step farther:
When new developments are being constructed, builders can build from scratch to a set of standards that considers sustainability in every part of the new development with the goal of attaining LEED Platinum status.
But not everyone is ready to transition towards LEED Platinum status with their existing buildings — perhaps more important to the concept of a sustainable future is retrofitting: how do we enable existing buildings to upgrade components of their systems to become more sustainable? What is the process to get all existing buildings up to code?
It’s the exact same concept with building a decentralized future: we have to be able to help all existing businesses and services transition and transform into this decentralized world. That means helping kick off the process, and transition parts of their companies piece by piece.
AIKON’s ORE Protocol, makes blockchain work for everyone by retrofitting existing APIs: adapting and transforming to the new decentralized future economy without having to completely rebuild from scratch.
The ORE protocol transitions APIs to dServices, easily and efficiently.
dServices for Dapp Developers
In talking to hundreds of developers over the past few years we’ve heard many of the same complaints and requests — developers looking to leverage blockchain technology to build products and services that matter are finding it difficult to build decentralized apps.
For those developers already committed to building the first wave of dApps — there are significant limitations to what can be built (unless you are interested in coding every single part of your product from scratch). Most developers rely on dozens of existing services to build a great app since rebuilding everything from scratch is an incredible waste of time and resources.
Dapp developers need to be able to access the entire world of software as dServices to be able to build robust decentralized apps on blockchain.
dServices for All Developers
Beyond those who have already jumped into blockchain with both feet, companies small and large (we’re looking at you Facebook) are starting to explore how to integrate their existing products and services on blockchain.
Unfortunately, for the average developer, the learning curve to get up to speed on Solidity is steeper than ideal, and it’s time-consuming to re-build the services for blockchain from scratch, despite the benefits. For many developers, the idea of turning apps and APIs into blockchain-enabled products may seem daunting and not worth the effort. Add in the challenge of how smart contracts are designed and businesses can’t afford to hack together a smart contract and risk it going rogue on the blockchain.
But what many developers don’t realize is that their current code might easily be transitioned (and monetized!) into a dService. It might not have occurred to them that it is possible or they simply don’t know where to start.
The ORE Protocol, enables developers to bridge their traditional service into a dService — without needing to completely learn how to code in Solidity or build Smart Contracts with guesswork.
dServices for Enterprise
Beyond the first wave of tinkerers, big businesses are slowly coming around to the reality that the world is going towards a decentralized future.
The good news: neither dApps nor the entire promise of the decentralized future will be possible without the $2.2 Trillion market worth of centralized APIs transforming into blockchain-enabled dServices.
The hard news: existing companies are going to need to retrofit their APIs towards a decentralized world, or face being replaced by faster moving decentralized startups.
While big players are making moves into blockchain by building out extensive teams to determine where they can transition, we are here to say — companies don’t need to make massive investments to make blockchain work for their APIs.
With the ORE protocol, existing companies can easily transform their APIs into dServices with limited effort and no need to build out an entire team or learn the in’s and out’s of Solidity and smart contracts.
And the better news? Many decentralized services will be vastly cheaper and more failure resistant than their centralized competitors — which means enterprises can gain a huge competitive advantage by using dServices.
This is the contribution Team AIKON is making to the decentralized future and we can help you take the first step towards decentralization now.
Have an existing API that you’d like to transform into a dService? Check out our GitHub repo, and send us an email to be considered to become one of our alpha partners. Current launch partners include HADRON, Inflect, GBOX, SpringRole, and TastyTime to name a few. We’re actively seeking companies with APIs for partnership — both in the blockchain/crypto space and beyond.
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