In 2018, ProgrammableWeb, the leading media outlet of the API economy, publicly sounded the death knell of its industry.
It was the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. FB stock had tanked, and Facebook had hastily turned off a number of key APIs to do anything possible to preserve their reputation -- yet again pulling the rug out from under an untold number of 3rd party companies and app developers.
“We’re not sure how many times this ugly history has to repeat itself before both developers and API providers get the hint,” wrote David Berlind, ProgrammableWeb’s Editor-in-Chief, along with co-writer Bob Reselman. “There’s a huge amount of risk that goes with providing and consuming public APIs...Since the birth of the API economy in 2005, building a business or product whose profitability wholly or partially relies on the ongoing availability of third-party APIs that you have no control over was and is a bad idea.”
Rebuilding from the ashes
However painful they are to read about, the many visible failures of the public API paradigm are creating ample opportunity for entirely new models to fill the void: models that optimize for certainty on all sides by shifting trust from an ever-changing Terms of Use to decentralized math and code; models that marry perpetual interoperability with community design standards that change in a highly predictable manner.
When developers get a stable, predictable foundation for integration, and content owners have a structured platform to define precisely how their IP is used, the promise that once propelled the API economy will finally come to fruition:
Builders focus on value creation, not platform risk
Investors confidently deploy capital on companies built to last
IP holders and data owners start welcoming innovation
In the world of digital assets, an open-source, rules-based public blockchain like Tari can be the foundation of this marketplace for certainty. But like any other marketplace, for the true potential of the ecosystem to become apparent, Tari will need a critical mass of IP holders and builders that are ready to capitalize on the efficiency that certainty provides. Will you join the Tari community in helping build the future?
Building critical mass for a digital asset ecosystem isn’t easy. Let’s talk about it.
Ask the Tari community how we’re working with real customers and end users to further our efforts and share your own ideas for how we can do so on Reddit, Twitter, or Telegram.
And this Friday at 9 AM PDT, March 20th join the Tari Labs team in an open forum on Telegram to discuss Tari use cases starting. (This translates to 12 Noon EST and for our European and South African readers 5 PM CET and 6 PM SAST respectively)
Other ways to get involved:
Are you a developer? Talk to us at #tari-dev on Freenode IRC and make your first contribution from our starter issues and now with complementary mobile issues.
Forward this email to others interested in the intersection of privacy, decentralization, and digital assets