November 2021 Community Update!

We've been very busy the past few weeks at Covalent - we are excited to share it all with you in this mega post.

TL;DR

• 12.8 million votes on our first two governance proposals
• 8 Epic hackathons
• 6 Big events
• 7 New blockchain partnerships
• 2 BeinCrypto features
• 1 Awesome product update

Key Highlights

• We proudly announced our new Covalent API Docs! There are a host of awesome new features including analyst mode, built-in i18n language features, quick-start templates, and new xy=k endpoints! You can check the main announcement here
• Our staking contract underwent the first of many audits as we continue to work towards single-sided staking in the Covalent Network. This one was led by Code 423n4, who takes a community-driven approach to competitive smart contract audits. Check out the announcement here.
• A deep dive on Covalent was published BeinCrypto! This was a great feature to expose the meaningful work we're doing to readers across the globe! Read the article.

• We officially held our first vote on the Covalent Governance Forum, in accordance with a proposal brought forth by a community member who requested we index Harmony so she could use our endpoints in a project she was building! 10.9 million CQT votes were counted and now you can find them on our docs! Our second governance proposal to index Axie Infinity's side-chain Ronin also concluded in November. Over 1.3M CQT were used by voters for the proposal to reach consensus. This was another proposal put forth by a community member, requesting our support to access Axie data!
• We had an internal day workshopping the Covalent Network, which involved members of the team running the innovative 'Block Specimen Producer' that whitelisted Validators will take on during the first phase of our network rollout. It was incredible to see this development come to life, after all the time and hard work that has gone into it.

• Our CEO and Co-founder Ganesh was featured on CNBC! This was an epic segment talking about India's adoption of cryptocurrency!

On 'Crypto: Digital Assets of the Future', @Manisha3005 speaks with @Covalent_HQ CEO Ganesh Swami (@gane5h) about where India ranks on the adoption of #blockchain & #cryptocurrencies@WazirXIndia #CryptoWithCNBCTV18 https://t.co/hBAUObV6Rf— CNBC-TV18 (@CNBCTV18News) November 23, 2021 <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Community

• We officially held our first vote on the Covalent Governance Forum, in accordance with a proposal brought forth by a community member who requested we index Harmony so she could use our endpoints in a project she was building! 10.9 million CQT votes were counted and now you can find them on our docs!
• Our second governance proposal to index Axie Infinity's side-chain Ronin! This was another proposal put forth by a community member, requesting our support to access Axie data! Proposal for Covalent to index Ronin (Axie Infinity's Ethereum side-chain) and creating API endpoints
• We held Community Call # 7 with special guest Marco Cora from zksync and Matter Labs! To view the October updates across all areas of Covalent you can watch here.
• Stay tuned for our upcoming Community Call #8! We will be joined by a special guest Jeffrey Zirlin from Sky Mavis -well known for Axie Infinity. More details here
• We wrapped up Season 2 of Stake in the City which was a massive success! Even though the content became more difficult as we delved into delegation ;), we saw an uptick in users and people had the chance to follow along as we released the first iteration of the Staking Dashboard! Season 3 is well underway and Alchemists have had a chance to meet a mock set of validators!
• The leaders at AlchemistDAO overcame many obstacles over the past couple months, setting up budgets, processes, and championing the visions for their respective guilds! Lesson: DAOs are hard work! We have the utmost respect for these amazing individuals that were able to come together and get the DAO up and running as we continue on our community voyage.
• Our Head of Marketing Pratik Gandhi was featured in another BeinCrypto article, this one revolving around marginalized communities in the Metaverse, and how web3 is accessible to everyone. Read the article.

Partnerships

• We announced our partnership with Matter Labs -the creators of zkSync, an Ethereum scaling solution secured by zero-knowledge proofs! Check out the announcement here.
• We also announced our integration with Heco, and we're excited to be providing a best-in-class experience for developers building on this energy-efficient chain!

🎉 We're thrilled to announce our partnership with @HECO_chain, a decentralized and energy-efficient blockchain for developers. Stay tuned for more collaborations soon! 👏 pic.twitter.com/hq1Ge2MIYt— Covalent (🧪, 🧪) (@Covalent_HQ) November 11, 2021 <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

• We indexed Ronin, Axie Infinity's side-chain! This was a great step for our ecosystem as we are able to provide data for the growing movement of play-to-earn games on the blockchain! Stay tuned for more insights shared from our team -who were more than happy to dive in and explore the world of Axie.

🎉 We’re excited to announce that @RoninChain (developed by the incredible team that created @AxieInfinity) has integrated with Covalent! 🎮 👍 Axie Infinity is the #1 Ethereum game by daily, weekly, and monthly active users 👩‍💼https://t.co/RZa0O6IQ4T pic.twitter.com/iYQwCrlD0V— Covalent (🧪, 🧪) (@Covalent_HQ) November 23, 2021 <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

• We partnered with UniLend Finance: a permission-less decentralized protocol that combines spot trading & money markets with lending & borrowing services. Our Head of Marketing Pratik Gandhi participated in an AMA to further describe how Covalent supports their project! Check out the announcement here.
• $CQT was listed on Ascendex! Ascendex, a leading global digital asset financial platform, facilitates deposits, withdrawals, and trading of the Covalent Query Token.

Hackathons

• We participated in ETHGlobal's Web3Jam - an event focused on all forms of decentralized media. We presented a workshop showcasing some awesome ways to build with the Covalent Unified API.

• In November, the Polygon BUIDL-IT Hackathon kicked off, India's largest web3 hackathon! This hackathon runs from Nov. 19 to Dec. 12 and is designed to promote web3 development and talent in India. Covalent is providing a $4K USD equivalent bounty for tools regarding DAOs, DEXs, NFTs and more! Check it out here.
• We were super fortunate to be the title sponsor for nwPlus' HackCamp. This event was specifically geared to onboard students and newbies into the world of web3! Our easy-to-use no-code API provided a seamless experience for students dipping their toes into blockchain data.

HackCamp title sponsor: @Covalent_HQ!Covalent is built by a team of financial analysts, data scientists, blockchain and database engineers passionate about improving and scaling blockchain technologies. P.S: Covalent was built at a hackathon! Learn more: https://t.co/jl00sCLrMg pic.twitter.com/4GUoZW4t2y— nwPlus (nwHacks + HackCamp + cmd-f) (@nwplusubc) November 10, 2021 <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

• We wrapped up our sponsorship of ETHOnline -the world's largest DeFi hackathon! We saw some truly incredible projects come out of this one using the Covalent API, 2 of which made it to the overall hackathon finalists! See the full list here.
• In October, we also launched our biggest One Million Wallets yet, in partnership with RSK. This competition featured over $20K in prizes with support from bounty partners like Tropykus and Sovryn! We had over 400 participants enroll to take on both community and technical challenges! See the winning projects here.
• We announced our sponsorship of Gitcoin's DeFi & Cross-chain Interoperability Hackathon -focused on creating new tools for decentralized finance with an emphasis on interoperability between protocols. Our Unified API was a match made in heaven, and we're currently deciding the winners for best DEX and DAO analytics dashboards! See the winners here.

Events

• Our CEO and Co-founder Ganesh Swami was featured on a panel at the University of British Columbia! Speaking to students at one of the leading business schools in the world, Ganesh outlined Covalent's mission to provide data visibility across blockchains.

Hosting an Intro to Crypto at @UBCSauderSchool!!! Thanks to @thealexgalaxy @gane5h @Ayelen_Osorio @Covalent_HQ @Netcoins @UBCFinanceClub @ubc pic.twitter.com/Pn6Q4rjK4C— Jarrett Vaughan (@JarrettVaughan) November 20, 2021 <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

• We were happy to sponsor Gitcoin's Defi and Cross-chain Interoperability Hackathon! Thomas Thiery, one of our epic community members, gave a presentation on machine learning techniques to be applied in crypto!

• Two of our DevRel team members, Emmanuel and Harish, were both invited to speak at DevRel Con! Emmanuel spoke about the junior DevRel experience and working at Covalent, whereas Harish was able to share his insight on onboarding developers into web3.
• Our Head of Ecosystem, Erik Ashdown, was featured on a TokenHunter AMA. In this event he spoke about how Covalent is a critical infrastructure component of the multi-chain future!
• Our partnerships manager, CK, presented two 'Scratch to DApp' workshops -the first at Cronos Hackathon, and the second with Binance Smart Chain and Chainstack! You can watch the Cronos recording here, and check out the Binance workshop below.

• Our Head of Developer Relations, Harish, and the Alchemist Queen, Jackie, presented a workshop at the Fantom Developer Conference! This workshop taught viewers how to build their own crypto wallet using the Covalent API!
• Head of Marketing Pratik Gandhi was joined by other innovators to talk all about DAOs on a show hosted by Camilla Russo for The Defiant -a leading DeFi news platform! Check out the announcement here.
• We launched a new series titled One Billion BUIDLs - a morning show where Harish (Head of Developer Relations) and Lei (API Marketing Manager) review and chat about epic builds using the Covalent API! This show is ongoing and takes place weekly on Thursdays! You can find all the recordings on the Covalent YouTube channel here.


• Our CEO and Co-founder Ganesh Swami sat on an excellent panel to discuss how blockchain is making the case for building a decentralized future. This was part of YourStory's TechSparks 2021: India’s most influential technology, innovation, and leadership summit. Read about it here.

Product

• EVMOS Mainnet and Testnet are now fully indexed! Evmos is an application-agnostic Cosmos chain that will be interoperable with the Ethereum mainnet, EVM-compatible environments, and other BFT chains via IBC, making it easy for users and developers to interact seamlessly between chains. Evmos aims to be the EVM Hub of Cosmos, making it easy for smart contracts to deploy and communicate within the Cosmos ecosystem. Covalent API users can query ALL Class A endpoint and return EVMOS chain data by setting Mainnet chainID: 9001, Testnet chainID: 9000.
• As part of the overall efforts to index Ronin Chain - which has successfully passed the community votes - we have added Katana to the Covalent list of supported DEXes. Katana is the Ronin decentralized exchange. Katana allows anyone to easily swap between the various assets within the Axie Infinity ecosystem. With the official launch of Ronin Chain on Covalent, users will be able to access transactions, log events, and activities on the Katana DEX.
• We made important fixes to the Block-Height parameters, fixing the start-block > end-block params during requests to endpoints that require the arguments. Further optimizing the experience for developers who are making calls to get events that occur within a given block range.
• To increase support for more developers and regions across the globe, we added a list of new fiat currencies: NGN - Nigerian Naira, ARS - Argentina Pesos, AUD - Australian Dollars and CHF - Swiss Francs, GBP - Great British Pound.
• When NFTs are newly minted, they can be transferred from the originating address to another address in batches. Here is an example of batch transfer of NFTs on Etherscan. We have built out the feature to track NFTs that undergo batch transfers. The response is parsed using TransferBatch to have the NFT in the [Balances_v2](https://www.covalenthq.com/docs/api/) Endpoint. Here is an example.
• When a transfer event occurs, it is very helpful to the developer to return existing sender and log events signatures for every transaction. We implemented a new feature: METHODrepsonse. The method response provides additional details on which transfer events were invoked. This defaults to true for transfer event. You can use the Get ERC20 token transfers endpoint to see the METHOD response.
• To reduce the number of addresses that are blacklisted we disabled automatic contract blacklisting and timeout-event on addresses with a large response object. To get data from such addresses, developers have to paginate their queries. This has increased a number of previous addresses now whitelisted!