What is Blockfrost.io?

Blockfrost.io is an instant, public and freely accessible API that removes infrastructure obstacles for developers so that everyone can start building (d)apps on Cardano. With Blockfrost.io, developers can start doing what they love ❤️, without the need for running and maintaining additional infrastructure and tooling themselves.

At the moment, we have more than 10,000 developers already onboarded in Blockfrost!

What is an API?

API is an interface that helps developers program (d)applications effortlessly. An API is a software component that makes the developer's life a lot easier, reusing already available tools instead of reinventing the wheel.

Blockfrost.io is a hosted API, this means that developers don't have to spend time building and setting up the infrastructure needed to run their own API. Instead, developers can focus on developing applications.

What is an SDK?

SDK stands for "Software Development Kit", which is a great way to think about it — a kit. Think about putting together a model car or plane. When constructing this model, a whole bunch of items is needed, including the kit pieces themselves, the tools needed to put them together, assembly instructions, and so forth.

An SDK functions in much the same way, providing a set of tools, libraries, relevant documentation, code samples, processes, and/or guides that allow developers to create software applications on a specific platform. If an API is a set of building blocks that allow for creating something, an SDK is a full-fledged workshop, facilitating creation far outside the scopes of what an API would allow.

The project will help developers on build applications on Cardano.

The main key performance indicator (KPI) would be the number of downloads of this SDK from the packagist registry. Our short-term goal is to have at least 10 active downloads in the first month after the project release. We would consider the project a long term success if the number of downloads per month stays above 10 for the entire year of 2022.

We do not foresee any problems during implementation. We have worked with the community to implement more than 10 of these SDKs in the past.

Roadmap, deliverables and performance

We plan to deliver the first stable version of the SDK within two months from the funding.

The first version will include 100% coverage of all Blockfrost API endpoints in PHP, including tests and documentation. We will continue working and maintaining the SDK through the year 2022.

We estimate it will take us 70 engineering-hours to complete the deliverables.

Our standard rate, which comprises of our engineers’ salaries, infrastructure costs, office rent, accounting and taxes is 100 EUR per hour.

We pay our people well because they are both skilled and exceptionally experienced in the industry. And last but not least, because we respect them and want them to feel good and appreciated while working on Cardano.

Five Binaries is an infrastructure development company. We’re Cardano pioneers - with the first Cardano block minted on an aeroplane, first stake pool on the ITN and the first Shelley transaction on the mainnet.

We are the creators of Blockfrost.io. We are participants in Alonzo since the Blue testnet and we are Plutus pioneers.

We are trusted by the community, as we have been granted already 24 proposals across several funds in the past. To find out our progress on making the Cardano infrastructure better, check our Catalyst dashboard page at <https://catalyst.fivebinaries.com/>.

We are trusted by customers such as Emurgo, Trezor or Cardano Foundation. To get in touch or find more information about us, please visit <https://fivebinaries.com/>.

We have implemented Cardano support into the Trezor Suite.

The progress can be tracked by a public GitHub repository, as well as our Catalyst dashboard where we post updates https://catalyst.fivebinaries.com/.

The release will include all the endpoints as mentioned above.

Not directly, but we have completed several of similar SDKs in different languages in the past, see our dashboard for more information.