Blockchain Middleware

How we are paving the path to the next blockchain unicorn

Introducing blockchain middleware

Different levels of middleware

  • Upper Middleware: It abstracts end-users and developers from all the low-level details of the blockchain. This category comprises (i) smart contract development tools like Truffle or Hardhat, which offer a smoother smart contract development process so you don’t have to worry about manually compiling or deploying smart contracts; (ii) interaction APIs that offer easy-to-use web APIs to deploy ERC20 tokens, send transactions to the blockchain, or interact with smart contracts without having to manually tailor transactions just by interacting with an HTTP API such as TrustOS; or (iii) DeFi wallets such as Metamask.
  • Lower Middleware: This type of middleware handles all infrastructure issues, so you don’t have to worry about deploying blockchain nodes, keeping them in sync, and enforcing their security. In this category of middleware, we find services like Infura, which deploys a pool of Ethereum nodes and offers a simple web API to interact with them. Infura is responsible for the maintenance and SLA of your blockchain nodes, and enables you to easily interact with the blockchain (in the case of Infura, the Ethereum mainnet) by sending calls to a web API.
  • Protocol Middleware: This is the next level of blockchain middleware. This category comprises different decentralized protocols built on top of L1 and L2 to enhance the core functionalities of the blockchain (my personal favorite). A good example of protocol middleware is The Graph Network. The Graph Network is an open network that is continuously indexing data stored in different decentralized networks (like Ethereum and IPFS) to make it queryable by external applications. It offers an interface to query data stored on-chain in these networks. This is a great example of the kinds of benefits middleware provides for developers: if a decentralized application needs to query data on-chain, using The Graph means that a development team won’t have to worry about building a system to query and index on-chain data. It can instead directly leverage The Graph, and thus focus on solving core problems instead.

Deep dive into a middleware platform

Smart Contract Domain Service

Application Management

Smart Contract API Service

Transaction Management and Monitoring

  • Total number of transactions
  • Number of transactions per application
  • Transaction trend
  • Geographical area where the user triggered the transaction
  • Total Tokens that were transferred
  • Total tokens transferred per application

Lowering the barriers for innovation and adoption

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Research at Protocol Labs | Avid reader seeking for constant innovation. [https://twitter.com/adlrocha] [https://adlrocha.substack.com/subscribe]

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