A Summer of Shipping
It's been a busy summer for us. 🙌☀️
On the 2nd of August, we introduced Map3 to the world on this blog and on Twitter. Alongside detailing who we are and why we exist, we asked developers to sign up for early access to our API on our waiting list.
We've had an incredible reception and have received meaningful feedback from users, potential team members and investors.
The Map3 Community API (Beta) is now available
Our API packages the metadata necessary to build great products that span multiple crypto networks. The Map3 API provides convenient access to the Map3 Assets Repository datasets via a REST API. It is open source and can be self-hosted as a standalone service.
We built it taking the learnings gathered after being builders in crypto for almost 10 years.
We want to make it easier for developers to integrate rich assets metadata into their products and services. That's why we have also introduced a free community API.
Developers can sign up to Map3 using their Github account. To help us prevent abuse and raise awareness of our protocol, we ask you to Star the open source repo before generating API keys. ❤️
SIGNUP NOW: https://app.map3.xyz
We also took the time to build a beautiful documentation site now hosted at https://map3.xyz/docs.
So long, sweet launch docs kitty gif.
Bootstrapping our Index
Our protocol naturally suffers from a chicken and egg problem.
Metadata consumers need assets to already be indexed before they can start using us. Conversely, indexers are not motivated to publish metadata for assets and networks until there is a critical mass of consumers of the data in order to justify the effort. Finally, Kleros Jurors can't review verification claims as there is no one funding on-chain assertions.
It's a three-sided challenge. 😵💫
Fortunately, we love challenges. Marketplaces like Airbnb, Uber and eBay solved this problem by 'bootstrapping' the supply side of their products themselves.
To that avail, we have been focused on getting the top EVM network assets on Map3. We have also been encouraged by the feedback from network foundations of funding the open-source indexing and trustless verification process of assets in their network.
After focusing on this effort for the last few weeks, we think that our Index is at the stage where integrating our API is significantly better than the alternatives.
Wrapping up Y Combinator Startup School
We delivered a great YC Showcase presentation, sharing our progress since the start of YC Startup School.
A mere two weeks later after this chart was created, Map3 now supports the top assets on 27 crypto networks and our tooling is more robust than ever.
Looking Ahead
- Inviting users to our API: Are you a developer integrating assets and networks into your products? We'd love to hear from you.
- Kleros Verifications: We will be focusing on hardening our Kleros verifications prototype and scaling it for multi-chain usage.
- Assets App: We want to make it easy for the community to add, map and verify assets, both manually and programmatically via a sexy UI.
Finally, we will continue to seek discussions with network ecosystem foundations and funds about funding the launch of the Map3 open source indexer on top of their network. We continue to think that Map3 is a critical missing piece of Web3 interoperability infrastructure.
Onwards!
-A