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Indira Smith
Token Relations

Covalent Q1 Update: 100+ chains integrated, 50+ new endpoints shipped, & 5 L2s launched 🔥

Breadth: Covalent integrates 30+ new chains in one quarter and reaches over 100 chains indexed; the most amount of chains ever indexed by a data infrastructure provider.

Depth: Covalent gets selected as the official launch partner to scale Ethereum with Polygon zkEVM and ConsenSys Linea, and is only one of two indexers supporting Base by Coinbase.

Speed: Covalent announces the Premium API tier; builders needing to increase their rate limits in order to scale their projects and use cases will have access to an even greater suite of endpoints and API improvements.

Security: The Covalent Network successfully migrates from Nomad to the Wormhole bridge, enabling the secure bridging of CQT to other networks and making all those impacted by the Nomad Hack whole; by switching staking from Nomad CQT to Wormhole (”Whole”) CQT.

Introduction

The first quarter of the year for Covalent had momentous growth across the entire organization. Kicking off the new year of 2023, the first quarter saw numerous blockchain integrations, product updates for our developers, new partnerships, and more.

Traction

Supply

With over 30 new chains indexed in just one quarter, and reaching over 100 chains (including testnets and mainnets) indexed, Covalent has the greatest variety of blockchain data than any other data provider in Web3. All of this data is easily accessible with just a single API key, free for those looking to experiment and try it out for themselves.

March alone had four major blockchain integration announcements, including zkEVMs, Layer 2’s, and those scaling Ethereum.

Data visibility for those building on zkEVM’s (ConsenSys’ Linea, Polygon zkEVM, and Mantle) will have even greater speed, efficiency, and security with lower fees. Indexing Arbitrum Nova will improve data availability for developers building the next generation of gaming with blockchain technology.

February announced Covalent as one of only two data indexers selected to support Base, the new Ethereum L2 incubated by Coinbase, to provide in-depth on-chain data for Base’s testnet, playing an active role in monitoring its development phase.

Other chains indexed in February include Flare, offering insightful data points for developers using Covalent looking to build real-world applications, particularly those focused on Web2 and Web3 composability. Support was also added for Canto, a permissionless, layer-1 blockchain that runs on the Ethereum Virtual Machine and is one of the fastest-growing blockchain ecosystems.

By indexing the greatest variety of blockchains in Web3 (L1s, L2s, zkEVMs, etc…) Covalent continues to see quarter-over-quarter growth from on-chain activity of developers using the Covalent API for a variety of use-cases including wallets, decentralized exchanges, NFT marketplaces, and more.

Demand

The very first of Covalent’s channel partners was signed in February. NodeReal, a leading blockchain infra provider with our Premium Balances API, provides an upgraded offering that enables devs to access comprehensive blockchain data at faster speeds & lower costs for BSC and ETH.

Research

With limitless rows of verifiable data, Covalent utilizes its own offerings for the developer community in the form of insights and analysis on trending Web3 communities, chains, and current events.

Traction Thread Tuesdays (TTT) kickstarted in February and highlight some of the top projects in the space that double as our ecosystem partners, all powered by the Covalent Unified API. Published in March were two traction analyses on the activity happening on Flare, in addition to Cronos and how it was able to double its total addresses in one year.

February spotlighted partners Milkomeda_com, the stickiest chain in its class in 2022, and Rootstock, which had over 5000 contracts created in Q4 2022 alone.

With the continued emergence of Web2 companies bridging the divide and heading into Web3, Covalent’s Research team published a research report in February on Nike. Using Covalent data, the report analyzes how Nike dominated the NFT game with a staggering $200M in revenue.

Product

API

What shipped this quarter at Covalent:

  1. Premium API - Our Premium API tier went live to the public, bringing higher rate limits and API improvements to users starting at $50 monthly.

  2. Class C - You can now get deeper access to top protocols like Aave, Curve, Balancer and others with our new class of endpoints called Class C.

  3. Transactions v3 - We updated our suite of transactions endpoints, releasing new and faster versions with added capabilities including better pagination. Get all transactions by address or by block with decoded logs.

  4. Balances v3 - Our number one endpoint, Get token balances for address, was made faster for the Premium API tier on Ethereum and BSC and Polygon. Easily get all (ERC20, ERC721, ERC1155, and native) token balances for an address.

  5. 30+ new blockchains - You can now make any Class A query on over 30 new indexed blockchains! See details below.

  6. NFT endpoints - We released a new and improved suite of NFT endpoints allowing you to get data on traits, attributes, ownership and more.

  7. Event logs - You can now get all the event logs of the latest block, or for a range of blocks, Including sender contract metadata as well as decoded logs.

  8. ETHDenver - We attended and sponsored the biggest annual developer conference in Denver, receiving 20 amazing project submissions and awarding $10K in prizes.

Read more:

In one of the biggest product updates in Covalent to date, the API Reference also shipped in the month of February. Visit the revamped interface to find step-by-step tutorials, guides, and references on the Covalent Unified API and other blockchain data products to support any use case being built on-chain.

Data Alchemist

After feedback from over 200 participants in the Data Alchemist Bootcamp at the end of 2022, Covalent spent the most recent quarter making significant infra upgrades to the data analysis product, Increment. This included upgrading the data pipeline to reduce the data lag, upgrading the database to improve scalability with demand, adding more NFT markets and DEXes to the decoded reports tables, and introducing a no-code method of interacting with Increment. With these upgrades in place, Covalent is set to run an even larger Data Alchemist Bootcamp in Q2 of 2023.

Covalent Network

Despite the Nomad Hack that occurred in the summer of 2022, Covalent was able to successfully complete the migration of the Covalent Network staking contract in January by moving from Nomad to Wormhole. As the new bridge of choice to enable the secure bridging of CQT to other networks, this migration represented a resurgence of the Covalent Network and marked the continued building into its next phase; the Block Specimen Refiner.

40,534,004.94 CQT is now currently staked (on Moonbeam), 8.37% of the total circulating supply.

$460,623 is the cumulative amount of CQT currently distributed.

Events

Attending the biggest IRL event of the year, ETHDenver, Covalent was able to get some quality time speaking to both devs and our partners, even commemorating the official partnership with Chainstack, one of the top RPC providers in the space.

Erik Ashdown, Head of Ecosystem, Axelar Interop Summit, Panel on Interchain Data.

Harish Raisinghani, Head of Developer Relations, Walletcon, Talk on Customizable and Composable Smart Wallets.

Covalent Coverage

Article by The Globe and Mail: Why the blockchain still has a future, despite its past

  • “In this past year alone, we have seen blockchain technology used to streamline historically tedious operations like data reporting, supply chain management, and beyond,” says Mr. Swami, CEO of Vancouver-based Covalent, which provides blockchain data API and infrastructure.

Article by Vancouver Tech Journal: Covalent partners with Coinbase to launch blockchain network

  • “We are thrilled to support the testnet launch of Base, a leader in the cryptocurrency space," said Covalent CEO, Ganesh Swami. "This collaboration is a testament to our commitment to providing our customers with the most comprehensive and accurate data possible, and we look forward to contributing our resources and expertise in the development of this groundbreaking new project that will benefit the entire crypto community.”

Read our Covalent Press & Media page for more.

Media

Looking Forward

  • The Blockchain Data Refiner - Phase 2 of the Covalent Network - is on track to be released in the next quarter, Q2 2023, and will be an engine that will serve as enriching and transforming Block Specimens, able to retrieve information directly from the Covalent Network.

About Covalent:

Covalent provides the industry-leading Unified API bringing visibility to billions of Web3 data points. Developers and analysts use Covalent to build exciting multi-chain applications like crypto wallets, NFT galleries, and investor dashboard tools utilizing data from 215 + blockchains. Covalent is trusted by a community of 40,000+ developers and powers data for 5,000+ applications, including 0x, Zerion, Rainbow Wallet, Rotki, Bitski, and many others.

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