Launch HN: SimpleHash (YC W22) – API to query digital assets
Using our API, developers don’t have to worry about how different chains like Ethereum, Solana, and Flow implement digital assets under the hood. We collect, standardize, and cache all this information for you, so you can retrieve it in a single request.
There has been a lot of controversy and hype around NFTs, but we’re focused on solving the technical challenges that our customers (software developers working with digital assets) deal with on a day-to-day basis. We don’t hold, transfer, mint or issue any form of crypto or digital asset ourselves–instead we aim to be the most comprehensive data provider for people who need to programmatically access this kind of information and media.
Working with digital asset data is harder than other kinds of blockchain data. For a given item, you typically have to go to 3 separate places to get data–which oftentimes includes a decentralized storage system (such as IPFS or Arweave) that may time out or be unavailable. To pull the ownership history requires parsing through the extensive log history of a blockchain. And that’s just for one NFT on one chain.
We’re building SimpleHash because our co-founder Alex experienced these pain points at his last startup, an NFT showcasing product called showtime.xyz. While there he built out an in-house indexer because no suitable alternatives existed for getting cross-chain data. After leaving showtime, Alex teamed up with me (we're friends from college) to help fill this gap in developer tooling.
As digital asset activity has moved across chains and ecosystems, it’s become increasingly difficult for companies to deal with this data in-house. Our indexer has now ingested half a billion assets across 16 blockchain networks, including testnets, and the volume and complexity is only growing.
SimpleHash is doing a number of things differently than other solutions. We generate thumbnails and blurhashes for images, along with SVG to PNG conversion (to improve compatibility with mobile apps). We pull in marketplace data, like floor prices and sales transactions, even from sources that do listings off-chain. We provide a spam score to help apps like wallets filter out unwanted NFTs. We provide enterprise-grade support and integration assistance, which many companies expect in web2, but is hard to find in web3. We’re one of the few options to have comprehensive coverage of both mainnets and testnets.
If you’re a developer building in the space, we’d love for you to try the API. You can read the full documentation here: https://simplehash.readme.io/reference/overview, and generate API keys here: https://app.simplehash.com/. We have a free tier for experimentation and testing, and beyond that our pricing model is request based, similar to other APIs. If you need help with anything, feel free to contact us at founders@simplehash.com.
We launched the initial version of the API coming out of YC and have had strong reception so far—we’re now serving some of the leading web3 wallets, like Phantom and Rainbow, and dozens of other players. Please don’t hesitate to share your feedback and questions.
Thank you!