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Launch HN: SimpleHash (YC W22) – API to query digital assets
71 points by owfwduke on Nov 1, 2022 | hide | past | favorite | 34 comments
Hi HN! We’re Alex Kilkka and Olly Wilson, co-founders of SimpleHash (https://www.simplehash.com). We allow developers to fetch comprehensive NFT / digital asset data from many blockchains at once.

Using our API, developers don’t have to worry about how different chains like Ethereum, Solana, and Flow implement digital assets under the hood. We collect, standardize, and cache all this information for you, so you can retrieve it in a single request.

There has been a lot of controversy and hype around NFTs, but we’re focused on solving the technical challenges that our customers (software developers working with digital assets) deal with on a day-to-day basis. We don’t hold, transfer, mint or issue any form of crypto or digital asset ourselves–instead we aim to be the most comprehensive data provider for people who need to programmatically access this kind of information and media.

Working with digital asset data is harder than other kinds of blockchain data. For a given item, you typically have to go to 3 separate places to get data–which oftentimes includes a decentralized storage system (such as IPFS or Arweave) that may time out or be unavailable. To pull the ownership history requires parsing through the extensive log history of a blockchain. And that’s just for one NFT on one chain.

We’re building SimpleHash because our co-founder Alex experienced these pain points at his last startup, an NFT showcasing product called showtime.xyz. While there he built out an in-house indexer because no suitable alternatives existed for getting cross-chain data. After leaving showtime, Alex teamed up with me (we're friends from college) to help fill this gap in developer tooling.

As digital asset activity has moved across chains and ecosystems, it’s become increasingly difficult for companies to deal with this data in-house. Our indexer has now ingested half a billion assets across 16 blockchain networks, including testnets, and the volume and complexity is only growing.

SimpleHash is doing a number of things differently than other solutions. We generate thumbnails and blurhashes for images, along with SVG to PNG conversion (to improve compatibility with mobile apps). We pull in marketplace data, like floor prices and sales transactions, even from sources that do listings off-chain. We provide a spam score to help apps like wallets filter out unwanted NFTs. We provide enterprise-grade support and integration assistance, which many companies expect in web2, but is hard to find in web3. We’re one of the few options to have comprehensive coverage of both mainnets and testnets.

If you’re a developer building in the space, we’d love for you to try the API. You can read the full documentation here: https://simplehash.readme.io/reference/overview, and generate API keys here: https://app.simplehash.com/. We have a free tier for experimentation and testing, and beyond that our pricing model is request based, similar to other APIs. If you need help with anything, feel free to contact us at founders@simplehash.com.

We launched the initial version of the API coming out of YC and have had strong reception so far—we’re now serving some of the leading web3 wallets, like Phantom and Rainbow, and dozens of other players. Please don’t hesitate to share your feedback and questions.

Thank you!




Very cool!! Is there a way to search for 3D model types? Like STLs or GLB files? I am creating an API over at https://heyrobot.org for 3D models... mostly for 3D printing, but would be awesome to reference any 3D models on SimpleHash on HeyRobot, so people can view them in 3D.


I worked on similar project https://openstory.io/data-api we can help you achive that. We're still in beta-testing right now but we do have capability to find 3D models.


We do pass through 3D files when the NFT metadata includes them, but we don't have an explicit search function. This is a great product suggestion though, to do search by media type in general.


Yeah let me know when this is possible!


Serious question as someone who owns none: NFTs still a thriving thing?



That could do with some analysis attached. The stats seem to say no, it's not a thriving thing and people are building on the hope that it returns as something useful in the future.

The whole crypto industry seems to be suffering from acute loss-of-interest right now.


Down from peak but $500M monthly volume across 200K users is not bad really. This dashboard isn't tracking other chains and L2s, like Reddit's avatars that just crossed $10M sales volume.

https://dune.com/polygon_analytics/reddit-collectible-avatar...


Fair question - overall volumes are certainly down from the 2021 highs, but there is growth in certain ecosystems (e.g., Solana). Our view is we expect this space to be cyclical like a lot of emerging technologies, especially as new use cases develop beyond digital art and collectibles.


Congratulations on the launch ! Could you share the use-cases for this sort of datafeed ? For example for what do people use ownership history ?


Thank you. There are a couple of common use cases for ownership history. One is to build up the trail of how high profile NFT collections have changed hands. Another is to understand what certain wallets paid for a certain NFT over time to predict future prices. Or to be able to analyze how holders of different types of NFT collections are connected.


I see. Helpful indeed. Congratulations again and best of luck !


This looks great, have you considered opening this up to other NFT use cases?

ESG Assets are a big under the radar industry that is basically developed using NFTs

If so would love to discuss!


Sounds interesting - we'd love to discuss: founders@simplehash.com


Aren't most ESG assets VCs?


Packaged into VPs which are then encapsulated by NFT's for recording Carbon amounts of 1ton/CO2


This is very cool, it's good to see people working to build bridges that make it easy to interface with blockchain data. Do you guys have an openAPI spec for the API?


Interesting product, I use moralis quite a bit for this type of service. I'm curious how you differentiate yourselves from them.


Thanks - we aim to have a broader set of chains and testnets, that can all be queried from a single endpoint. We also provide a couple of things that make it easier to deal with media, like cached versions and preview sizes via a CDN. We also pull in active floor prices and collection metadata from multiple marketplaces, even when it's stored off-chain.


Congrats on the launch!


Congrats on the launch! We have integrated SimpleHash into Pipedream so developers can quickly building automations connecting SimpleHash with 1000+ other apps and APIs -- https://pipedream.com/apps/simplehash


Thank you for the integration and highlighting this


congratulations on launching! we created a website builder for nft artists called butiq.art where we will test the simplehash api in the next weeks.

on a side note, if you ever need nft data for the tezos blockchain, feel free to shoot me a message. i developed an nft indexer that covers that chain very well.


Thank you! Just sent you an email


Congratulations on the launch Olly, Alex, and team!

We use SimpleHash at Tovera for our NFT anti-fraud platform (shameless plug):

https://fnftf.io/

I can vouch for the level of support from the team at SimpleHash - they have been an absolute pleasure to work with!


Thanks so much, we love Tovera's mission too!


We're very happy users of SimpleHash at Omni- congrats on the launch guys!


Thanks so much, we love what Omni is up to as well!


Awesome product, awesome team. Congrats on the launch guys!


Thank you!


Congrats :)


Thank you Alex!


Congrats on the launch!


Thank you!




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