How Is The Blockchain Catalyzing A Second-Wave API Economy – Part 1

Here comes the blockchain with a redo. Learn the facts related to the second wave API economy.

Where Is The Blockchain Technology Headed? 

Hereby the role of the CIO has been seen in the corporate world as evolved while keeping pace with the rate of innovations characteristic in technology and business. It is then from the position’s original mandate that to steward the IT department and ensure a company’s systems ran smoothly whereas today's CIOs are now expected to not simply enact IT platforms and thereby understand and create new business models that employ existing technology and external solutions for unique tasks.

Therefore as the technology moves away from the monolithic model and also into a mix-and-match paradigm, APIs have become a key component for success. Therefore these APIs are sub-functions or small applications allowing developers to use different tools in a single solution by enhancing communication between different components, whereas, in essence, it is found that these APIs act as the communicators between the two pieces of software and enabling both to work as if they were a single program. 

Later on, as these APIs have become increasingly popular tools thereby with companies like Facebook, Amazon, Salesforce, and even more launching their own API s which is set to allow companies to access some of their services without having to be fully migrated into their ecosystem. Therefore this new paradigm has then led to the rise of what some experts call the API economy as a model that enhances a company’s bottom-line by improving interoperability and thereby creating new systems from the existing ones. 

Hence much in the same way businesses, today are building new platforms not from single sources but a variety of applications, blockchain technology offers a more democratic and efficient way to construct new solutions. Finally, it can be said that blockchain is being founded upon the idea of democratization as well as decentralization where two notions are inherently built into the API development paradigms whereas like APIs were the catalyst for a much sought after the technological revolution as it is the technology supporting cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin that has shown the vast potential to lead a new wave of what is the innovative development.

The First API Economy: Centralization Wins

Hereby the concept of APIs was then borne out of the necessity evolving technology brought about, whereas the legacy system was dependent on a single monolithic application handling every aspect of an operation, as APIs offered developers the ability to simply plug in existing solutions from other systems to gain functionality without sacrificing efficiency and they present companies with the ability to thereby integrate tools with proven track records as for key functionality all the whilst shaping a more decentralized environment for the innovation.

It is then observed that the API economy came about as companies understood that more than simply developers tools, APIs are now delivering a way to expedite business processes using existing technology to produce novel platforms as well as establish a more connected and interoperable environment for applications with an increasingly cloud-based world, as APIs offer an easy way to, therefore, connect services and then create solutions that can then employ the best of what’s that readily available. Hence for many companies, this model is highly attractive as it is set to allow them to deploy existing technology as also increase their footprint and revenues, whereas companies such as Facebook, Amazon, Salesforce, and others have already done.

To note there is one excellent early example that is of both the rise and stagnation of the current API economy where LinkedIn initially the company opened several APIs letting developers use LinkedIn tools in a variety of ways. Here the program was highly successful and allowed users to share large portions of information from their accounts within other services. Whereas after it became too popular, the company announced a decision to shutter most of its APIs or heavily restrict them to paying members killing off what was a vibrant developer ecosystem using the company’s tools like the LinkedIn’s reaction highlights a problematic dichotomy in the industry.

The Final Thoughts

Finally regarding those APIs that are then built to remove centralization and as they’re designed to create the interconnected systems sharing data quickly and supporting a more efficient ecosystem governed only by what‘s possible and not what’s allowed. Thereafter the other major trend in which the tech world and one LinkedIn displayed when closing off their API library was the fear embodied by major companies thereby surrounding losing their grip as gatekeepers of the world’s data. Therefore it is subsequently observed that LinkedIn was unhappy API users had the ability given by itself to simply move data they could use for monetization from the company’s services. Hence it is where the blockchain is aiming to create a more secure transaction layer.

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