What is an API Integration? Your Guide To Blockchain API Integrations.

With so many software apps and web services available today, it’s only natural that there be a way for them to be interoperable with one another.

Software development is a long and complex process, and industry demands mean that the speed of productivity is just as important as the quality of the software package. 

As technology continues to evolve, some software and web services have positioned themselves at the industry’s core. Examples are Google Maps and PayPal. Such core services are sophisticated and robust enough to be integrated into other platforms. 

However, none of these would be possible without API integrations.

What is an API?

API stands for Application Programming Interface, and it is the basis of communication and interoperability between two software applications.

APIs allow developers to make their software code and functionality accessible to licensed, third-party users. This way, there can be two-way communication between the two platforms, and the user can leverage the data and functionality via a sophisticated interface. 

However, one might ask, how does the user understand how to use the interface? Are the specifications not different from platform to platform?

It’s simple.

All APIs come with standardized documentation that outlines all the specifics involving each functionality and how to use it.

Over the past decade, APIs have become the underlying functional basis for several web apps.

How, then, do these interfaces work?

How do APIs Work?

APIs consist of clearly defined rules or instructions for intercommunication between platforms. 

APIs occupy a position between web servers and user applications, providing a means of interaction and data exchange between both platforms. 

To use an API, the client or user application must first initiate an API call or request to retrieve data. The request is sent to the web server over the URI (Uniform Resource Identifier), an internet protocol. The request often includes components such as a verb, body, and headers. 

After the web server receives the data request initiated by the API, it automatically responds by providing the requested data. This data is then transferred in reverse, over the protocol, to the client application.

Depending on the type of web service, the data exchange can occur in various ways. However, all transfers occur only via the API. 

Because of their crucial position between client and server platforms, security is a default feature of APIs. API calls or requests typically include authorization certification to validate users and mitigate the risk of hacks and other malicious attacks on the server component.

As such, additional security components, including HTTP headers, query string parameters, and cookies, are included during the data exchange as an added security measure. 

Perhaps, you’ve been losing track of the gist with all the technical jargon. You needn’t fret. Here are two examples of an API data exchange, one that occurs more commonly than you think.

Every time you use a payment gateway on an e-commerce store, checking out after adding items to your cart, you use an API. 

The payment gateway works because of API integrations. Instead of requiring all your bank details, you have to enter your credit or debit card details onto the client software, i.e., the front end of the e-commerce website you’re shopping on. 

After you initiate the payment, the API sets up a unique token identifying your action as an API request or call. It sends this request to the web server over secure internet protocols and returns the request as a successful payment.

Do you still find the concept a bit tricky? Here’s another example:

When you use a ride-hailing app such as Uber, you’re accessing the Google Maps API. The API is the basis for the interaction between the ride-hailing service, Google’s geolocation satellites, and their corresponding software, Maps. 

Now that we have a fairly good grasp of what APIs are and how they work, let’s take a step further into their inner workings and figure out what API integrations are.

What are API Integrations? 

If an API is a platform that facilitates data exchange, API integration is the connection that is effected or facilitated in the exchange. Specifically, an API integration is that connection between two applications with which they exchange information. 

API integrations are the key component that powers the processes involved in the client-server data exchange. 

As earlier emphasized, software rarely exists in isolation. Instead, they function in a web of interconnected functionality that enables them to communicate and exchange data with other platforms.

The connections that are facilitated each time are what are referred to as API integrations. API integrations are often a highly complex process because they involve designing, testing, and deploying APIs for various purposes. 

Whatever methods are used, API integrations are highly essential for software developers looking to build interoperable, scalable, flexible, and highly functional apps. 

Let’s delve further into the benefits of API integrations and see why they’re so essential today. 

Why Are API Integrations Essential? 

API integrations are the key to sustaining modern businesses. 

Admittedly, an API integration may not be directly useful to you if you’re not a tech developer or user of advanced tech, such as data analysis or special crypto trading tools.

Nevertheless, everything you can access in mobile and web apps is a function of API integrations.

Crypto API integrations, for instance, are highly essential to developers. 

Blockchain technology is highly complex, with its intricate digital ledger system requiring the highest levels of precision and security. 

Building a blockchain from scratch is a highly expensive and time-consuming venture. It’s hardly something that one developer can do. 

Other components of the crypto industry, such as exchanges, are equally complicated. Today, there are several centralized exchanges where crypto users come to do business, trading hundreds of altcoins and stablecoins.  The average crypto trader tends to use more than one exchange platform, taking advantage of the differences in prices and availability of liquidity across the platform.

As such, it’s common to have traders have crypto dealings across Bitfinex, Coinbase, Binance, and several other exchanges, switching between their mobile or web apps as required. 

This goes without mentioning the digital wallets that store private crypto keys. Although MetaMask is by far the most popular wallet for crypto traders, several other service providers compete actively. 

Additionally, there’s a host of DeFi apps and platforms like Uniswap and Compound that provide various utility services such as lending and yield farming. 

Combined, it’s a vast world out there that’s the blockchain. 

With relevant API integrations, it’s possible to build your app and include multiple functionalities in the blockchain.

That’s why APIs are so essential. They’re the heartbeat of the software development process, whether you’re building something in the commerce, finance, blockchain, or marketing niche. 

Let’s examine uses cases involving API integrations.  We’ll focus on crypto and blockchain technology, and how the right API integrations can benefit your disruptive project.

Building Blockchain Projects With The Right API Integrations

As a developer looking to build a worthwhile blockchain-based app, it’s already clear that several functionalities must be considered. 

In other words, there are a lot of integrations to consider. 

If you’re building an e-commerce store and want to ensure that it’s equipped with modern digital payment methods like crypto payments, a crypto-based integration is what you need. 

In this case, you’ll require integrations with digital wallets like MetaMask, so that customers can easily synchronize their accounts and make payments seamlessly with BTC or any altcoin or stablecoin of their choice. 

On the other hand, your unicorn project may be an innovative market analytics tool that provides users with real-time data on market insights regarding various crypto tokens. You may even need to incorporate elements of exchange platforms along with it so that users can access exchange-based price-related data. 

Here, you have a major consideration.

Should you choose to integrate just one or several exchanges?

Whichever option you choose, there’s plenty of work ahead of you. If you’re integrating Binance, Coinbase, and Kucoin, you have to get the respective API keys and begin to incorporate them one by one. That’s a lot of work, and there’s a better solution to integration that’s more efficient (more explanation on this later). 

Nevertheless, the right integrations remain essential.

The same applies if you’re building a gaming app or any software that uses blockchain elements like dApps and NFT collection.

As such, APIs integrations are utterly indispensable if you want to build anything of note in the blockchain niche. 

Benefits Of API Integrations For Your Disruptive Project

The right API integrations can highly benefit your project. Here’s how:

1. It boosts innovation

With the increase in demand for more efficient software tools that are scalable and solve real-world problems, API integrations are an innovative approach that can help your project stand out from the rest and stay competitive in your niche. 

By providing you with tools to access functionality and data from other platforms, your software’s capabilities and potentials are limitless. 

2. It boosts automation

Automations are all the rage in software development today. The industry is swiftly moving from the era of slow, tedious manual operations to efficient automation.

With API integrations, you can save more time and effort with innovative automated processes. 

3. Improves User Experience

Key to the success of your unicorn project is a great user experience. 

You want to deploy your software and subsequently face negative comments and bad reviews on the functionality of your platform.

With API Integrations, you can develop good customer experiences and make it easier for them to access your services and data. 

4. Save costs

Developing an application from scratch is highly expensive and time-consuming. With the right API integrations, you can save much of the cost and focus on other project goals.

Optimize your Blockchain Project with Vezgo API

As highlighted earlier in this article, incorporating all the essential blockchain-based integrations into your project can be a massive chore. 

There are hundreds of exchanges, wallets, DeFi platforms, and NFT collections, along with tons of other smaller web 3.0. 

Here, the main issue isn’t access to APIs. There are plenty of them, after all. Rather, the big question is this:

How do you plan to integrate every access point into your project? 

There are tons of them, so incorporating so many APIs is out of the question. Given the time constraints and sheer extent of the work involved, it’s not a wise option to use Binance API, Coinbase API, and the fifty or hundred APIs needed to make your software the complete tool. At least, not when there’s a better alternative.

Enter Vezgo.

Vezgo is a Crypto Data API and Blockchain API that provides one single dashboard for all crypto integrations. Rather than flit around from one API to the other, you can simply get Vezgo’s API key and access all the blockchain and crypto integrations your project needs. 

Let’s check out some of this exciting software’s best features and integrations.

1. Exchange integrations

All the major exchange integrations are included in Vezgo API. Coinbase, eToro, Binance, KuCoin, Kraken, Bitmart, OKX, and lots more are covered in Vezgo’s impressively extensive lineup of exchange integrations.

2. Wallet integrations

If you’re looking to integrate wallets like MetaMask, Coinbase Wallet, and Trust Wallet, each one, and more, is present in Vezgo API. Vezgo also supports xPub, yPub, and zPub and Internal transactions.

3. Timely updates

Vezgo’s development team works hard to ensure that the latest updates are available on the API. 

This means that you don’t have to worry about manually updating every single integration. Instead, Vezgo caters to it all.

4. Web 3.0 integrations

Vezgo has the complete Web 3.0 array, featuring integrations with DeFi platforms and services and NFT collections.

Great, isn’t it?

Even better, new integrations keep getting released so that you can be assured of access to the very best blockchain-based integrations every time.

What Can You Do With Vezgo API?

With the competition gone, Vezgo API is pretty much the ultimate all-in-one API with the versatility to match the very best in the industry. You can use it to:

• Track crypto holdings and portfolios
• Manage crypto wallets
• Analyze real-time market data.

These are only a handful of Vezgo API’s exciting capabilities. 

Waste no time further, and get Vezgo’s API keys today!