Invisible Infrastructure Issue 02｜Dialogue with OKX Web3 Team: Why build API?

The crypto industry promotes API construction, which will not only improve technical interoperability and user experience, but also promote the expansion and decentralization of the ecosystem, thereby achieving large-scale popularization of Web3 technology.

Jim Webber, a famous software architect and technical expert, once said, "A good API should be like a clear conversation, not a series of commands." Therefore, API is a technical interface and a communication and dialogue between developers, so clear API design and documentation are crucial.

As the industry's one-stop leading Web3 portal, the OKX Web3 wallet continues to lead the construction of APIs and is becoming an indispensable multi-chain Web3 development engine in the industry. By providing a complete set of Web3 development solutions - OnchainOS, it has achieved standardization in the access of chains and services, greatly reducing the development cycle and investment costs, thereby linking global developers to achieve joint creation.  

From the perspective of practical application, the OKX Web3 Wallet API includes major modules such as wallets, DEX aggregators, Marketplace, DeFi, and everything from transaction liquidity to on-chain data solutions. This article is the second in the "Invisible Infrastructure" series of the OKX Web3 Wallet, and is also the second in the introduction of the OKX Web3 Wallet API. Through dialogue, we will deeply explore the story behind the OKX Web3 Team Building API.  

To learn more about OKX Web3 wallet API, you can click to read the first issue: Invisible Infrastructure Issue 01 | Co-creation with global developers, comprehensive analysis of OKX Web3 wallet API 

The driving force behind the construction of the API 

OKX Web3:We were the first to realize that the construction of the API is very important, which is not only related to the development of the OKX Web3 ecosystem, but also very important for the development of the industry. After in-depth thinking, we began to invest in API construction and continue to serve developers and industry construction. In-depth research shows that the driving force behind this is not a single factor, but a comprehensive consideration.  

From the perspective of wallet API, it mainly comes from the needs of industry participants:  

First, with the growing prosperity of the Web3 ecosystem, more and more people are flocking to Web3, because Web3 provides companies with ways and opportunities to better attract and serve customers, such as brands can create immersive brand experiences and interactions through digital assets and NFT collections; retailers can customize personalized on-chain incentives and loyalty programs; social service providers can use Web3's on-chain applications and token distribution to establish deeper community connections with creators and users. In short, Web3 can help companies establish new business models and generate new sources of income. More and more people realize that Web3 will generate a new industry composed of decentralized applications and services, and they hope to enter and master this technology as soon as possible.  

Secondly, many developers and interested institutions face a lot of obstacles and difficulties when entering Web3. The first challenge is the high threshold and complexity of Web3 wallets. Specifically, first, Web3 wallets store user digital assets and are the basis for matching transactions. They have a relatively complex underlying system and account system, which is difficult to understand and use. Second, the strong public chain systems are isolated from each other, making it difficult and time-consuming to analyze and apply different public chain systems.

In general, it takes a lot of time, money and expertise to develop a safe and reliable Web3 wallet system. In this context, the OKX Web3 wallet API service tool came into being to solve the above pain points and problems. Developers use the OKX wallet API to efficiently and securely build wallets in just 3 steps, easily access 60+ networks, including popular EVM, BTC, etc., and also support cutting-edge ecosystems such as inscriptions.  

Take the OKX DEX aggregator as an example. This is related to user needs, market competition and ecosystem development. Specifically:  

User needs: With the vigorous development of decentralized finance (DeFi), users are increasingly demanding more efficient, secure and scalable APIs. Especially for large-volume transaction users and developers, for example, they hope to achieve more flexible trading operations and automated strategy execution through APIs. OKX DEX aggregator responds to this demand and provides a powerful and easy-to-use API interface to help users meet their diverse needs in decentralized transactions.  

Market competition: Competition in the DeFi field is extremely fierce, and major platforms have launched new features and services. In order to maintain its leading position in the market, OKX DEX aggregator recognizes that providing powerful and easy-to-use APIs is the key to maintaining competitiveness. Through API construction, OKX DEX aggregator can quickly iterate and introduce new features to meet market demand and attract more users and developers.  

Ecosystem development: API is not only a tool for expanding functions, but also a key factor in promoting the development of the ecosystem. Through API construction, OKX DEX can attract more developers to participate and develop more innovative DApps, thereby promoting the prosperity and development of the entire ecosystem.  

For another example, starting from OKX Web3 DeFi, there are more differentiated driving forces:  

In terms of developers: API can attract more developers to the OKX Web3 platform and enrich the ecosystem. This not only promotes the development and integration of third-party applications, but also provides users with more diversified and convenient services.  

In terms of user experience: By allowing third-party applications to seamlessly pass through the capabilities provided by the OKX Web3 platform, it helps its users to trade, manage assets, and participate in DeFi activities more conveniently, thereby improving the user experience. In addition, the OKX Web3 DeFi API also enhances the interoperability of the platform, allowing OKX Web3 DeFi to better interact with other blockchain networks and applications, and promote the convenience of cross-chain operations and asset transfers.  

In terms of innovation: Another key driver is the support of innovation. By opening APIs, OKX Web3 DeFi can support and encourage the development of more innovative decentralized applications (dApps) and services, especially attracting enterprises and developers who need customized solutions, so as to maintain competitiveness in the rapidly changing Web3 field. In short, these factors jointly drive OKX Web3's decision to build APIs, aiming to enhance platform functions while promoting the growth and sustainable development of the crypto ecosystem. Development process, challenges and innovations OKX Web3: We can explain the development process, challenges and innovations from different sections. First, about the development process. Taking OKX Wallet API and OKX Market API as examples, the entire development process can be said to be a process of extracting core functions from requirements. At the beginning, we faced a large number of diverse customization requirements from users, which were both complex and specific. In order to meet the actual needs of developers, we first abstracted the core requirements from these diverse requests.

This means that we need to extract the most representative functions from a wide range of user scenarios and implement them through a limited set of interfaces. The challenge of this process is how to provide sufficient functional coverage without losing flexibility in the process of simplification and abstraction. Through this process, we not only successfully developed an API that meets the needs of developers, but also introduced innovative thinking in the design of the API, so that the interface remains efficient and concise while still being extensible and universal.  

Second, about innovation. From the perspective of OKX DEX aggregator, the development process has gone through several key stages and made a lot of innovations.

1) Modular design: In order to ensure the extensibility and flexibility of the API, the OKX DEX aggregator adopts a modular design approach. This design enables the API to easily integrate new functional modules and iterate quickly according to market demand.  

2) Multi-chain support: Supports 20 networks, including EVM networks and heterogeneous chains such as Solana and TRON, to meet the needs of different users. The implementation of this multi-chain support requires the API to have extremely high flexibility and adaptability. The OKX DEX aggregator overcomes the differences between different blockchains by designing a unified interface and compatibility mechanism.  

3) Cross-chain bridge and DEX aggregation: Aggregate 18 cross-chain bridges and 400+ decentralized exchanges to ensure that users get better exchange quantities and quotes. The implementation of this aggregation function requires the API to be able to handle complex transaction routing and price calculations.  

4) Single-chain exchange: Aggregate the liquidity of each decentralized exchange, split a single transaction into multiple DEXs, and provide users with better prices through efficient routing.

Third, about challenges. From the perspective of OKX Web3 DeFi, the main challenges are: 1) Information volume challenge: The amount of information returned by the API interface far exceeds the content on the Web side, which is the first challenge we face. The API needs to meet the diverse needs of different developers, so when designing, we must not only consider the breadth and depth of information, but also ensure performance and response speed under large amounts of information. To achieve this goal, we have optimized the data structure and transmission so that the API remains efficient when processing large amounts of data. 2) Batch interface design: Another important design consideration is the batch interface of OpenAPI. For example, many developers need to process a large amount of data at one time, so we focus on the design of batch interfaces. The development of batch interfaces not only improves user efficiency, but also helps reduce the load caused by repeated API calls. Through meticulous design and multiple rounds of optimization, we ensure that the batch interface remains stable and reliable in a high-concurrency environment. 3) Integration of platform-related information: Each interface needs to provide not only basic market data, but also cover more platform-related information. For example, OKX Web3 DeFi-specific functions and market conditions and other information need to be integrated into the API. This increases the complexity of the API, but we believe that this information has important reference value for users. Therefore, we have given special consideration to how to efficiently organize and transmit this additional information in the design to ensure that it can be easily obtained and used by users. 4) Demand uncertainty: In the early stages of API development, one of the biggest challenges we faced was uncertainty about what functions and fields OpenAPI users really needed. Since the market and user needs were not yet clear, we needed to be bold in our design. Relying on our understanding of the market and close communication with early users, we gradually explored a set of API architectures that can meet diverse needs. At the product design level, this exploratory development process helped us accumulate valuable experience and ultimately formed the current powerful and flexible API system. These challenges and innovations not only helped us build a more complete API system, but also laid a solid foundation for continuous improvement and optimization in the future. Goals achieved OKX Web3: Goals are not static, but dynamically adjusted.  

Currently, the goal of Wallet API is to keep up with the most cutting-edge technologies in the industry, including EIP-4337 and other cutting-edge technologies that simplify the wallet account system, and the MPC layered wallet solution favored by institutional users. At the same time, it provides the richest, most comprehensive and most stable data services, such as asset statistics capabilities for millions of addresses, and assets and transaction data for 100+ public chains. In the future, we will continue to deepen the underlying infrastructure, simplify the difficulty of technical development, open source, and allow more people to enter Web3, which is no longer a difficult task.  

The goal of OKX DEX Aggregator API is to become the developer's first choice and industry standard by providing the industry's leading API solutions, while promoting the expansion and diversification of the OKX DEX Aggregator ecosystem. In the future, we will continue to optimize API functions and performance, improve user satisfaction and usage, and continue to innovate, provide the latest technologies and functions, and maintain market competitiveness.  

The goal of OKX Web3 DeFi is to support more DeFi protocols, provide more functions and fields for developers, etc., and through continuous performance optimization, such as database upgrades, etc., it can take on more users and provide good services to the industry.  

The goal of Market API is to continuously improve API functions and increase the usage rate of API, while continuously lowering the industry threshold and promoting the establishment of industry standards.

Key implementation functions

OKX Web3: This is a very good question. Through continuous iteration, we have realized many key functions and provided strong technical support for developers.

Currently, the wallet API function covers multiple core modules, meeting the basic asset management and transaction needs of users. The key functions that have been realized include:

For example, developers can use the wallet API to manage accounts, assets, transactions, common information queries, andWebhook (real-time subscription to on-chain data), etc. Specifically, developers can use the wallet API to generate addresses and wallets, query on-chain assets and coin price information, manage transactions, and query other commonly used data such as coin information, Gas price, and address authorization information. Among them, the transaction management module provides a wide range of services such as building, signing, broadcasting, tracking transactions, querying transaction history, supporting transactions on account model networks such as EVM, and supporting transactions on UTXO model networks such as BTC. With the OKX Wallet API, users can quickly build a simple asset dashboard in just three steps.

The key functions that the current OKX DEX aggregator API plan has implemented include:

1) Single-chain exchange: Through efficient routing and intelligent order splitting algorithms, as well as aggregating the liquidity of multiple decentralized exchanges such as Uniswap, Curve, and Balancer, a single transaction is split into multiple DEXs, and prices, slippage, and transaction costs are comprehensively calculated to provide users with better prices.

2) Cross-chain bridges and cross-chain transactions: On the one hand. By aggregating high-quality cross-chain bridges such as Stargate, Across, Wormhole, and SWFT, multiple cross-chain path options are provided. On the other hand, the self-developed X Routing algorithm is used to automatically find the best liquidity pool when trading on the source chain, and a better exchange quantity is obtained through the intelligent order splitting algorithm. Finally, through the cross-chain bridge price comparison, the cross-out quantity, cross-chain bridge fee, slippage and transaction cost are comprehensively calculated to obtain the best cross-chain quotation.

3) Stability and high availability: High stability and response speed ensure that the API response time is within 100 milliseconds, and provide a better inquiry path for free.

Currently, OKX Market API plans to launch Runes and Atom APIs in the short term, and enrich API functions by supporting popular chains or new protocols. In addition, it plans to launch push services and professional trading SDKs to increase trading volume and user volume.

In addition, the key functions that the current OKX Web3 DeFi API plans to achieve include: querying the information of the entire network's defi protocols and investment products, querying the user's own holdings, conducting transactions, redemptions, and receiving rewards, calculating subscription and redemption estimates, etc.

Reduce the difficulty of API integration

OKX Web3: Taking into account that the ease of API integration is very important for the adoption of a wide range of developers, we have taken a series of targeted measures to ensure that developers can easily and efficiently integrate the API into their projects.

Taking the OKX Wallet API as an example, we provide:

1) Rich and comprehensive technical documentation and examples

We follow the general steps and content of Web3 application development to deconstruct and sort out the technical implementation and content of the Wallet API in detail, and strive to provide users with comprehensive and practical capabilities and data. In addition, we also use quick start examples of three key application scenarios to show developers how to integrate and use SDK and API calls, so that they can quickly get started and understand the key content of API use.

2) Close and responsive technical support

We have built Discord and TG communities for developers. In the TG community, we have 5+ operation docking personnel who pay attention to feedback in the API group 24 hours a day and respond to technical support. In the Discord community, we have designed special channels for each API module to respond to corresponding developer questions and consultations.

3) Continue to listen to feedback from the technical community, iterate and optimize the difficulty and obstacles of API integration

During the internal test, we will establish various 1 v 1 special technical docking groups for users with clear development needs, accompany developers, solve various problems and feedback of access, and collect feedback problems for targeted API optimization.

4) Easy and simple developer workbench

At the same time, we have built a quick-access developer workbench to facilitate project management and API management for users. In the future, we will continue to optimize and reconstruct the developer management platform to become a one-stop development tool.  

In terms of OKX DEX aggregator, we provide:

1) Detailed documentation: We provide comprehensive and easy-to-understand API documentation, covering everything from basic concepts to advanced usage. These documents not only include detailed API call examples, but also FAQs and best practice guidance to help developers get started quickly.

2) Developer tools: In order to simplify the development process, we provide a wealth of code examples and debugging tools. These tools can help developers quickly locate problems and easily integrate API functions, reducing development time and costs.

3) Technical support: Our technical team is always available to help developers. Whether it is an issue with the use of the API or a problem during the integration process, our technical support team can respond in a timely manner to ensure that developers have a smooth and worry-free integration experience.

In terms of OKX Market API, we provide:

1) Detailed documentation: We have written detailed API documentation that covers all functional modules of the API and provides rich use cases and code examples. These documents are carefully organized so that developers can easily access all the required resources and conduct API testing and debugging instantly. Reduce the learning and development curve.

2) Interface optimization: In API design, we focus on optimizing the ease of use of the interface to ensure that the API calling logic is simple and clear. Through streamlined parameter design and consistent response format, developers can more easily understand and use API functions.

3) SDK provision: We provide dedicated SDKs for mainstream programming languages ​​and frameworks, allowing developers to quickly integrate the OKX Market API without writing code from scratch. The SDK not only simplifies the calling process, but also has many common functions and error handling mechanisms built in, further reducing the difficulty of integration.

In terms of OKX Web3 DeFi, we provide:

1) We have invested a lot of resources to improve the API documentation, which not only covers the technical details of the API, but also includes use cases and FAQs. To further reduce the learning cost of developers, we provide a wealth of sample code and practical use cases. These examples directly demonstrate the common usage scenarios of the API, allowing developers to quickly understand and apply them to their own projects. The document content is clearly structured and well-organized, aiming to help developers quickly understand and master the use of the API.

2) Timely communication with project parties: We emphasize timely communication with project parties and maintain efficient interaction during the API integration process. This direct communication channel enables developers to quickly get help, solve problems encountered in integration in a timely manner, and ensure the smooth progress of the project.

Training courses to help developers better understand the functions and best practices of the API.

These measures are designed to provide developers with a seamless and efficient integration experience, ensuring that they can fully utilize the functions of the OKX Web3 API to succeed in decentralized applications.

Applicable groups and application scenarios

OKX Web3：

First,OKX Wallet APIcan serve users with millions of addresses at the exchange level, and has the asset statistics and transaction capabilities of millions of addresses. At the same time, it can serve a wide range ofWeb3application developers, obtain the most comprehensive currency and public chain data, and construct their own user system, and easily manage assets and build transactions.

Second, the OKX DEX API mainly serves developers who develop decentralized applications (dApps) and tools, professional traders who conduct large-scale transactions and high-frequency transactions, as well as financial institutions and large corporate users, etc. It is suitable for major scenarios such as decentralized transactions and cross-chain transactions, such as various decentralized transaction operations through API to ensure better prices and lower slippage; or to achieve asset conversion between different chains through API to ensure efficient and secure cross-chain transactions.

Third, OKX Market API mainly serves user groups such as aggregators, bots, GameFi projects, and primary market project parties, and its application scenarios cover multiple aspects such as trading market creation, batch trading, and market data acquisition.

Fourth, OKX Web3 DeFi API is mainly for developers and project parties who need to access DeFi protocols and trading products.

Feedback

OKX Web3:OKX Web3API's usage rate and user feedback are generally excellent, which is specifically reflected in the following aspects:

In terms of usage rate, since its release, the usage rate of OKX API has steadily increased, and its high performance, rich functions, and stability have attracted more and more developers.

In terms of user feedback, users have positive feedback, and generally believe that the documentation is detailed and easy to understand, and the integration process is relatively simple. Many users particularly pointed out that the API performs well in handling complex trading scenarios and large amounts of data, greatly improving their work efficiency. In addition, some users have put forward constructive suggestions for improvement, such as performance optimization of certain interfaces or adding specific functions. We attach great importance to these feedbacks and have incorporated these suggestions into the subsequent development plan to further enhance the user experience and functionality of the API.

In the future, we will continue to listen to the voices of users and continuously optimize API functions to ensure that the ever-changing needs of the market and users are met and bring value to more users.

Upgrade and maintenance strategy

OKX Web3: The construction of the OKX Web3 API has taken multi-level and multi-angle measures in response to changes in market demand and upgrade and maintenance strategies to ensure that the API can continue to meet user needs and maintain technological leadership and market adaptability.

In response to changes in market demand

1) Regular surveys: We regularly conduct user surveys and market analysis to gain an in-depth understanding of users' actual needs and the latest trends in industry development. These surveys help us capture market dynamics in a timely manner, ensure that the functional design of the API is always consistent with user needs, and promote the continuous optimization of the API in terms of functions and services.

2) Flexible iteration: We adopt agile development methods and iterate quickly according to changes in market demand. We quickly introduce new features and improvements through short-cycle development and testing processes, so that the API can adapt to market changes in a timely manner and maintain its competitiveness. This flexible iteration ensures that we can respond quickly to user needs and launch new features and enhancements that meet market expectations.

3) Industry trend tracking: In addition to user surveys, we also pay close attention to industry trends, especially new technologies and standards in the fields of blockchain and decentralized finance (DeFi). By tracking and analyzing these trends, we can make arrangements in advance to ensure that the API can support the latest technical standards and market needs.

Upgrade and maintenance strategy

1) Continuous optimization: We regularly perform performance optimization and security checks on the OKX Web3 API to ensure that the API remains efficient and secure at all times. By optimizing code, improving architecture, and enhancing server performance, we can reduce potential security risks while increasing API response speed.

2) User feedback: We attach great importance to user feedback and collect and process this feedback in a timely manner through multiple channels. Whether it is a feature suggestion or a problem report, we will respond quickly, fix the problem and make functional improvements. User opinions are an important basis for us to continuously improve the API, ensuring that we can quickly adjust and optimize the API to meet the actual needs of users.

3) Version management: In order to ensure the compatibility and stability of the API, we have adopted a strict version management strategy. Before releasing a new version, comprehensive testing and verification are carried out to ensure that the introduction of new features will not affect the stability of existing features. Through clear version management, we are also able to provide users with a backward-compatible upgrade path to ensure that they will not encounter compatibility issues when using the new version.

4) Regularly launch new features: In order to maintain technological leadership, we regularly launch new features and updates. These updates include not only functional requirements proposed by users, but also innovative features developed independently by us. By continuously introducing new features, we ensure that the OKX Web3 API is always at the forefront of the market and provide users with more advanced technical support.

Through these countermeasures and upgrade maintenance strategies, the OKX Web3 API can flexibly adapt to changes in market demand and continue to provide efficient, stable and secure services. We will continue to be user-oriented and continuously improve the functionality and performance of the API to ensure that it always stays ahead in a rapidly changing market environment.

Construction plan

OKX Web3:

The construction plan of the OKX Wallet API includes: (1) Providing more real-time, convenient and comprehensive asset and transaction data. At present, the data source and data acquisition method have been optimized to ensure that the needs of developers for continuous expansion are met. (2) Continue to connect to popular public chains, simplify the entry threshold for connecting to popular public chains, and enrich the diverse wallet ecosystem with everyone. (3) Gradually provide the capabilities and solutions of MPC wallets and AA smart wallet accounts, provide wallet services with diverse scenarios and powerful functions through open source, and simplify the entry process of Web3 wallets.

The OKX DEX API construction plan includes the following aspects: adding more single-chain exchange and cross-chain transaction functions to improve the comprehensiveness of the API; continuously optimizing the performance of the API, improving the response speed and stability; enhancing developer support, providing more documents and tools; and promoting the API through various channels to attract more users and developers.

The OKX Web3 DeFi API will continue to follow up on user needs, such as protocol apy historical data, and continue to iterate.

The OKX Market API plan for the next few months includes supporting the new BTC protocol, building a push service, improving the aggregation interface function, launching a trading SDK, and supporting more heterogeneous network APIs. We plan to open more API interfaces in the future, especially for new networks and protocols, and continue to expand the functions and application scenarios of the API to meet the needs of the market and users.

Disclaimer

This article is for reference only. This article only represents the author's views and does not represent the position of OKX. This article is not intended to provide (i) investment advice or investment recommendations; (ii) an offer or solicitation to buy, sell or hold digital assets; or (iii) financial, accounting, legal or tax advice. We do not guarantee the accuracy, completeness or usefulness of such information. Holding digital assets (including stablecoins and NFTs) involves high risks and may fluctuate significantly. You should carefully consider whether trading or holding digital assets is suitable for you based on your financial situation. Please consult your legal/tax/investment professional for your specific situation. You are solely responsible for understanding and complying with relevant applicable local laws and regulations.