API Connectivity Problem

An application programming interface (API) is a well-standardized and documented protocol that is used to communicate with a specific application to receive services from it. These services may be in the form of receiving data or triggering an event. Applications can communicate with each other through their APIs, allowing them to be integrated to build more complex applications. Because of this, APIs are called the glue that holds the digital world together.

As a result of businesses using APIs to monetize their data and services, the con- cept of an API has transcended its initial meaning. The term no longer refers to the technical implementation of an interface, but to a full-fledged product that in- cludes the service it wraps. Global enterprises that provide APIs generate 25% of their organizational revenue from APIs on average. Companies such as Sales-force, Expedia and eBay have reported to generate the majority of their revenue through APIs , and we are at the cusp of fully API-centric business models. Even entrenched industries such as banking are expected to be disrupted by this movement.

Integrating existing services to their applications through APIs has allowed develop- ers to build increasingly complex and capable applications, which has led to the rise of giant Web services and mobile applications. However, these APIs that businesses deliver their services through are not directly compatible with smart contracts due to technical reasons that will be described in Section 1.1, which has curbed the de- velopment of meaningful decentralized applications. Therefore, the difficulty we are facing in building decentralized applications that can interact with the real world can presently be best described as the API connectivity problem. Misinterpreting this problem will lead to a sub-optimal solution.