Covalent launches first non-EVM blockchain data support to enhance Solana ecosystem experience

2022-02-11 16:57

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Covalent has added Solana support to its "Get Wallet Balance" endpoint, bringing an industry-leading unified API experience to tens of thousands of developers across the Solana ecosystem.

Source: Covalent wechat

Abstract

Covalent has added Solana support to its "Get Wallet Balance" endpoint, bringing an industry-leading unified API experience to tens of thousands of developers across the Solana ecosystem.

「获取地址的 Token 余额」使开发者能够通过单个 API 调用获取 Solana 上任何钱包地址的 Token 余额，包括 NFT。

With this new data, developers can incorporate Solana assets into multi-chain cryptocurrency wallets, NFT Galleries, and more.

Covalent has submitted a patch that, once approved, will have a 90% copy of all historical on-chain data, which includes; Mints, transactions, and everything else that has happened since the Genesis block.

Why Solana?

Over the past 4 years, Covalent has focused on driving the growth of the Web3 space. Hundreds of projects on the more than 26 blockchains we support rely on Covalent to provide indexing and query services. The magic of Covalent is its single parameter chain_id, which can be used to query data from over 26 of the blockchains we support.

Our vision for entering the Solana ecosystem is to enable developers to build more attractive end-user applications, many of which have yet to be discovered. Covalent is a tool to enable a billion possibilities, providing all blockchain data in one place in a standardized and easy-to-read format.

Solana is the fastest blockchain on the market today and focuses on scaling applications to support adoption while keeping costs to a minimum. Since the summer of 2021, Solana has been the most frequent new blockchain our community has requested to be indexed. Typically, we can index a blockchain end-to-end in a matter of weeks, so why does it take so long to add support when the need is not met?

The road to Solana

Indexing Solana is not an easy task. So far, we have been able to index more than 26 blockchains, but they all have one key underlying architecture in common...... EVM entry.

The Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) is an execution engine originally invented for the Ethereum blockchain. EVM is now the industry's dominant force behind all the popular smart contract blockchains. The top blockchains we index --Polygon, Avalanche, and Fantom -- are all based on EVM.

Solana is the first non-EVM blockchain that we have added support for.

What makes Solana different?

Solana is what we call a non-EVM chain, meaning its underlying functionality is unlike any of the blockchains we've indexed so far. Solana's unique architecture makes it faster and cheaper than other blockchains, but it also means we have to make adjustments to export data in a way that meets our standards.

Imagine walking into a supermarket where you shop regularly. If you shop at the same chain store in a different city, it's generally the same set up and you know how to browse.

Now, imagine you're in a completely different country. The shops are unique and the labels are written in different languages. In this case, you need to spend more time to find the item you normally buy.

This is the difference between EVM chains and non-EVM chains.

In Solana's case, we are now familiar with the new store layout, and we have learned the language on the label. Starting with today's balance terminal is just the first step in our efforts to provide Solana with detailed, historical, on-chain data alongside the 26 + other chains we index.

Why Covalent?

Covalent 的 API 经过了数以万计的开发者在数百个应用程序中的实战检验。目前，开发者可以通过」按所有者获取 Token 账户」RPC 端点访问 Solana 数据，但 Covalent 超越了 RPC 层，可以获取关于 Token 持有者、交易记录、NFT 元数据和市场数据等的当前和历史数据。

Covalent's developer experience will never require users to write complex and time-consuming indexing code to extract data. Instead, the developer experience should remain the same even as we scale to more non-EVM chains. We believe in doing the heavy lifting to achieve the lightest, fastest user experience. Make things easy for the developers and WAGMI.

From Ganesh Swami, CEO and co-founder of Covalent:

「我们很高兴能进入 Solana 生态系统，并将我们细化的历史链上数据的标准带到这个高要求的区块链上。Solana 以其独特的架构提出了一个新的挑战，我们正急于适应。今天是 Token 余额，明天是其他的一切。」

How do we enhance Solana's data

If you're not a technician, you can skip this section.

「按所有者获取 Token 账户」RPC 端点是一个美妙的开始。就背景而言，在以太坊上没有同等的端点可以获得用户钱包中的所有 Token 。

However, the response of the RPC endpoint is not that useful in practice. In fact, it can be quite painful to make the data useful. We've taken these challenges away from developers and provided solutions that together lead to a smoother experience for developers. Such as:

NFT Metadata - The RPC response from the Solana node returns only the NFT, but does not include its metadata. Developers will have to make two additional calls before they can render images or display details about NFT.

Token 定价 - 我们已经将大多数常见的 Token 映射回它们的以太坊对应物。我们将为专门在该区块链上的资产开发一个 Solana 原生的定价引擎。

Matching slots and Blocks - THE RPC response returns only the current slot of the transaction, but not all slots have blocks. We have a special data worker who can do this extra mapping for developers.

Token 标识 - 我们返回 Solana 上最流行的 Token 标识。

Admittedly, much remains to be done. This is just the beginning.

How to Get started

Simply use the Balances_v2 endpoint with the chain number 1399811149.

curl "https://api.covalenthq.com/v1/1399811149/address/CNjUuXWcGrx1VUC2QdBozwNak1F4PatjxvAwXhXrsEy8/balances_v2/"

What's next

Our engineering team is currently blocked from extracting data from Solana nodes by a patch we developed. This patch is necessary to get all historical on-chain data. This means that users will be able to see minTs, transactions, and everything else that has happened since genesis.

我们很快就会在我们所有的 A 类端点中支持 Solana，与我们丰富、干净和格式化的区块链数据的高标准相匹配。一旦 A 类端点得到支持，开发人员将能够解决以前由于需要历史数据而未被触及的用例，例如，税收工具，跨越不同时间范围的分析，以及关于 Token 持有人和 Token 转移的详细信息，是我们将比 RPC 层更深入的一些方式，使开发人员的应用程序具有优势。

In the next few weeks, we will release a code template for building a wallet on Solana. These templates can be found on our Replit https://replit.com/ @covalentdemos and are an easy way for anyone to start modifying an existing project into something unique!

More resources

Solana RPC Documentation (Tutorial) & NBSP;

https://docs.solana.com/developing/clients/jsonrpc-api#gettokenaccountsbyowner

Deep Solana trading records

https://medium.com/@asmiller1989/solana-transactions-in-depth-1f7f7fe06ac2

What is a EVM

https://ethereum.org/en/developers/docs/evm/

Solana vs. Ethereum

https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/solana-vs-ethereum-a-detailed-comparison

About the Covalent

Covalent provides an industry-leading unified API that makes billions of Web3 data points visible. Developers have used Covalent to build multi-chain applications such as cryptocurrency wallets, NFT Galleries, and investor dashboard tools that leverage data from more than 26 blockchains.

Covalent is trusted by a community of more than 15,000 developers and provides data for more than 500 apps, including 0X, Zerion, Rainbow Wallet, Rotki, Bitski, and many others.

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