Atomic Raised $40 Million, APIs and Web3, The API-first Index
This is issue 2022.09 of the API Changelog, a weekly mix of API news, commentary, and opinion. In this issue, you’ll get to know the most relevant API-related information from the week of February 28, 2022. Subscribe now, so you never miss an issue of the API Changelog.
Funding and M&A
GGV Capital launched the API-first Index. The index tracks the top 50 private API-first companies, according to the investment firm. GGV shares that API-first companies have raised a total of $5B in 2021. Companies on the index include Stripe, Contentful, and PubNub.
Atomic, a payroll API startup, raised $40M in a Series B round. Mercato Partners and Greylock led the investment, with participation from Portage Ventures, Core Innovation Capital, and ATX Venture Partners.
Lynx, a healthcare payments API platform, raised $17.5M in a Series A round. Obvious Ventures a .406 Ventures led the investment, with participation from Winter Street Ventures, First Cressey Ventures, and Shields Capital, among others.
Rarify, an NFT infrastructure startup, raised $10M in a Series A round. Pantera Capital led the investment, with participation from Slow Ventures, Hyper, and Greycroft, among others.
Haruko, a DeFi platform, raised $10M in a Seed round. White Start Capital and Portage Ventures participated in the investment.
Sudo Africa, a card-issuing API platform, raised $3.7M in a Pre-seed round. Global Founders Capital led the investment, with participation from Picus Capital, Rallycap Ventures, and Kepple Africa, among others.
Notifi, a Web3 messaging infrastructure startup, raised $2.5M in a Pre-seed round. Participants include Race Capital, and Hashed.
Aurora Mobile (Jiguang), a mobile big data solutions platform in China, announced the acquisition of SendCloud. According to GlobeNewsWire, “both customer engagement services have highly complementary capabilities that will provide customers with industry-leading technology to simplify their omnichannel communications.” The acquisition is expected to happen by the end of March 2022.
API-first
Matt Rhys-Evans wrote “Why Data Strategy Should Be as Simple as Playing Football.” In this article, Matt uses the analogy of football to explain how you should manage your data. Matt believes that “people aren’t effective at passing data to each other and are sometimes playing with different versions of data.”
Wings Tech Solutions published “API Directory vs API Discovery — What’s the difference.” This piece is a comparison between an API Directory and the concept of API Discovery. Among other things, the author explains how you can use both solutions.
Bill Doerrfeld wrote “Why the Built World Needs Standard APIs.” In this article, Bill explains how physical buildings connect to information and how different solutions use different protocols. Bill believes that “pulling unstructured data from 20 different data lakes into a clean API could allow easier access to new solutions.”
Tamina Zaheri wrote “API Program Foundations: Basics and Terminology.” In this piece, Tamina explains what an API Program is and clarifies its terminology. Tamina explains what different terms mean, including API Lifecycle, API Governance, and API Platform.
TechGig published “Everything about API : Definition, Types, and Specifications.” This article explores what an API is and some of the terminology that API professionals use.
Practice
Oliver N wrote “Validate Zero Enum Value in Protocol Buffer.” In this piece, Oliver explains how you can verify if a Protobuf message contains enum fields with zero value.
Astin Choi from Sendbird wrote “How to use webhooks to link API services with chat events.” This article explores how you can trigger chat messages from your API by using webhooks. This solution can be used to create a customized notification system.
Bhavesh Shah wrote “Bringing APIs To Blockchain’s Decentralized Web3.” In this piece, Bhavesh why APIs are important in Web3 and why “it makes sense that APIs will also help share third-party data in blockchain applications.” However, according to the author, there is one big obstacle related to the central nature of APIs.
Nayan Agarwal wrote “Building Web APIs using Microservice Architecture.” In this article, Nayan shares his view on how you can use the microservice architecture to build APIs. According to the author, you should slice microservices into layers that include the API, the infrastructure, and a validator.
Security
Ian Barker wrote “API attacks increase almost 700 percent in the last year.” In this article, Ian reports that “malicious API traffic has increased 681 percent in the last year, set against a 321 percent increase in overall API traffic.”
Ameya Talwalkar wrote “Ten Things Your API Security Solution Must Do: Part I.” In this piece, Ameya recommends ten actions to improve the security of your API. The actions include API Discovery, Data Governance, and API Governance.
Steve Zurier wrote “API security incidents affected 95% of organizations in the last year.” Steve reports that, according to a recent survey, “95% of organizations have experienced an API security incident in the past 12 months.”
Lawrence Hecht wrote “Privacy Gains Prominence as an API Security Concern.” In this piece, Lawrence mentions that the “exposure of sensitive information is not a new problem, but the prominence of API-first companies makes the issue more important than ever.”
