Hasura Raised $100 Million, API Terms of Service, GitHub Sunsets Teams
This is issue 2022.08 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 21, 2022. Subscribe now, so you never miss an issue of the API Changelog.
Funding and M&A
Hasura, a GraphQL API-as-a-Service, raised $100M in a Series C round. Greenoaks led the investment, with participation from Vertex Ventures, Nexus Venture Partners, and Lightspeed Venture Partners, among others.
PayMongo, a payments platform, raised $31M in a Series B round. Participants include Soma Capital, JAM Fund, and Global Founders Capital.
Xoxoday, an employee rewards platform, raised $30M in a Private Equity round. Participants include Giift, and Apis Partners.
HUBUC, an embedded finance platform, raised $10M in a Seed round. Participants include Y Combinator, Village Global, and Runa Capital.
Bware Labs, a decentralized infrastructure API, raised $6M in a Series A round. Participants include Blizzard, Kosmos Ventures, and Impossible Finance.
Announcements
GitHub announced the sunset of their Teams API endpoints. The sunset will happen with two brownouts on March 1 and 8, 2022, followed by a final removal on March 15, 2022.
Olo, an enterprise digital order logistics company, announced the acquisition of Omnivore. According to Food On Demand, the acquisition “helps Olo expand digital orders in general. The company wants to help the industry go from about 15 percent of digital orders to 100 percent.”
Edamam, a provider of nutrition analytics, announced a partnership with APILayer. According to MENAFN, this partnership “leads to the launch of three APIs that will revolutionize accessibility to nutrition data and analytics for developers: Nutrition Analysis API, Food Database API, and Recipe Search API.”
Fintech
Danaconnect published “What are the effects of the so-called API Economy on the financial industry.” This article explores the new business models and opportunities that the API Economy creates. The focus is on the financial industry and how APIs have been improving it.
Computing published “The importance of security and identity in Open Banking.” In this piece, the author shares how banks must make sure that they are secure if they want to maintain the trust of their customers. One of the areas that is often overlooked is when banks need to integrate with partners outside financial services.
API-first
Daniel Goldman wrote “Universal Public Application Programming Interfaces (UAPIs).” In this article, Daniel introduces the concept of Universal Public APIs and how you can create one. According to the author, “The secure and public nature of blockchains like Ethereum offer a safe and universal way to quickly and automatically generate public APIs that anyone can use to access data and code on the blockchain.”
David Castro wrote “Did you develop an API using best practices?” This is a handy checklist put together by David that you can use to assess if you’re following the best practices of API development. The checklist includes items that go from authorization, to version control, and everything in between.
Burak Yilmaz wrote “Suggestions for REST API improvement.” In this article, Burak suggests a series of improvements to the way you commonly create REST APIs. The improvements range from naming resources, to caching, and versioning.
Management
Mehdi Medjaoui published “I have read the API Terms of service: the biggest lie of the programmable web.” In this piece, Mehdi asks the reader to participate in a survey related to how transparent API Terms of Service are.
Archil Cheisvili wrote “Running multiple APIs side-by-side with AI paves way to hyper-automation for business.” In this article, Archil explains that you can run multiple APIs in parallel and what the advantages are.
Pronovix published “What kind of developer portal do you need?” This piece, explores the different types of developer portals and what their advantages and disadvantages are. Among the types of portals the authors include API Marketplaces, Ecosystems, Procurement Platforms, and Integration Portals.
Emely Patra wrote “Why custom integrations could be costing your business its competitive advantage.” The article shows that “only 28% of enterprise applications are integrated.” According to the author that is because custom integrations take time to build. Instead, organizations can adopt a low and no-code approach to integration, increasing its efficiency.
Practice
Nathan Mellis wrote “Building Great APIs for an AI-Powered Future.” In this piece, Nathan explains how APIs can help automate most of the AI-related tasks while integrating with existing tools and services.
Vadim Markovtsev published “Continuous Performance Improvement of HTTP API.” In this article, Vadim explores ways to identify API performance bottlenecks and implement improvements.
Mohammad Shoeb wrote “Next-Gen Architecture Best practices.” In this article, Mohammad shares the different types of architectures and what their pros and cons are. Additionally, the author suggests ways to use those architectures in the best possible way.
Security
Crypto News BTC published “Understanding the Coinbase API Vulnerability.” This article explains how Coinbase had an issue that would allow anyone to perform transactions without verification of balance.
Ian Barker wrote “Consumers value APIs for convenience but worry about risks.” In this piece, Ian shares how APIs can create convenience “61% of consumers don’t feel confident that brands prioritize building security.”
