Overcome the Challenges of Blockchain with Crypto APIs

While technological innovations bring a multitude of business opportunities, they also pose a number of challenges. Blockchain is certainly no exception. Blockchain technology is one of the most exciting developments of the 21st century.  

It’s immutable, trustless, and decentralized nature is set to revolutionize how we do business and is already making waves in major industries. That said, blockchain technology is still in its infancy and has its teething problems. Yet businesses can’t afford to sit idly by and wait for blockchain technology to just “get easier”.  

Knowing what the challenges are to implementing blockchain into your business operations and how to overcome them will give you a competitive edge and future-proof your business. 

Challenge #1: Financial Resources 

Lack of funding is one of the biggest hurdles facing SME wanting to capitalize on the blockchain. There are a number of financial implications from human resources to equipment, to the cost of continuous staff training and technical upgrades for a rapidly evolving market. 

Gaining access to the blockchain requires special hardware, with running costs and regular maintenance to be budgeted for. This can be a significant amount especially if a project needs access to multiple blockchains, as each blockchain requires its own “nodes” (the communication portal to the blockchain).   

READ MORE: Blockchain Nodes Explained 

Challenge #2: Skills Shortage 

The blockchain is a relatively new technology and up until recently has had a reputation as a passing fad, therefore training courses and blockchain education were few and far between.  

Yet, as blockchain technology and cryptocurrency becomes more widely accepted, the demand for specialist skills, knowledge and experience has rapidly increased.  

According to a 2020 report by LinkedIn, blockchain was the number one required hard skill by recruiters and the most difficult to find. Thanks to the scarcity, it’s also expensive.  

SMEs are often priced out by more established organizations who have the budget to offer greater remuneration, benefits and incentives when attracting skilled blockchain professionals. 

Challenge #3: Security  

Although blockchain technology produces an immutable (unchangeable) ledger of transactions, blockchain networks are still vulnerable to cyberattacks such as 51% hacks and phishing attacks. 

Many of these attacks focus on maintaining access to digital wallets. These wallets store the private keys which prove ownership of any and all digital assets and cryptocurrency associated with the wallet address.  

Challenge #4: Integrating Blockchain with Current Systems  

Different blockchains have different programming languages and protocols which can mean the need to hire an expert for each protocol, which increases the staffing budget, and thanks to that scarcity of talent, significantly delays the time to market. 

It can also cause interoperability issues with systems and infrastructures currently in place leading to data loss, operational disruption or heightened security risks. 

Challenge #5: Scalability 

All of the above challenges greatly affect a company's ability to scale their blockchain products. The more popular and mainstream blockchain technology and decentralized applications (dApps) become, the more traffic they will attract and the more data being processed.  

Unless SMEs have the ability and the budget to add blockchain nodes, better equipment and more staff, the increased traffic can slow or crash the system leading to poor user experience and a loss in profits. 

How Can Businesses Overcome the Challenges? 

The good news is that all of these challenges can be easily avoided thanks to companies offering blockchain infrastructure as a service. Providers, like Crypto APIs, allow SMEs to leverage blockchain technology to deploy their products faster without the high price tag. 

For example, Crypto APIs provide the necessary blockchain technology, infrastructure, and experts to take care of the complex back-end operations allowing businesses to focus on their core activities.  

How Crypto APIs Provides Solutions to the Challenges 

Solution #1: Lower Costs  

Crypto APIs lowers the bar for SMEs entering the blockchain market. They don’t need to purchase, run, or maintain expensive hardware or blockchain nodes. We offer a pool of reliable and secure always-ON nodes that are hosted and maintained by us. 

Our team has worked hard to develop solutions that simplify the processes of not only accessing blockchain technology but also reducing operational costs. For example, our Wallet as a Service is designed to be data-light helping businesses reduce transaction fees by up to 90%. 

Solution #2: Access to Experts  

Reap the benefits of blockchain technology without having specialized knowledge about the operational intricacies. Crypto APIs’ dedicated team of proven professionals means businesses don’t need to hire their own blockchain experts. Crypto APIs have the knowledge and the team ready and waiting. They also provide unparalleled 24/7 customer support. 

Solution #3: Hack-proof Security 

Using Crypto APIs means business can take advantage of the most up-to-date security systems- lowering costs and stress while increasing trust between them and their end-users. 

Our full product suite includes a quantum secure MPC-based Wallet as a Service, the most advanced cryptographic technology, with additional security such as TSS for signing transactions, governance layers, whitelisting and more.  

We are also proud to share that Crypto APIs has ISO/IEC 27001:2013 certification— the only globally recognized security standard for the evaluation of a business’s ability to protect sensitive and confidential data. 

Solution #4: Easy Integration 

Instead of writing different code to integrate an application with every blockchain individually, Crypto APIs allows the ability to code once and integrate with all of the blockchains we support, just by changing one or a few parameters. This provides massive time savings that can drastically speed up your time-to-market. 

We provide access to libraries and SDKs for the most popular programming languages. Our APIs are Open API 3.0 based which means you can easily generate code samples or additional SDKs in case we don't support the one you are looking for. 

Solution #5: Auto-scalability 

Crypto APIs uses a microservices architecture and Kubernetes for auto-scaling so that businesses can securely scale their operations at a much greater pace. Autoscaling enables businesses to automatically scale their services, up or down depending on traffic.  

This helps application speed and agility while also simplifying processes and freeing-up precious developer time.   

We also support the top blockchain protocols and crypto exchanges and constantly monitor the market and integrate new additions regularly so that businesses can grow easily and stay ahead of the competition. 

About Crypto APIs 

Crypto APIs offer business, SME and organizations the ability to overcome the challenges of implementing blockchain technology and reap the benefits without the complexities and operational and developmental costs. 

With instant access to blockchain data, webhooks, automations and unified API endpoints we provide businesses a frictionless way to interact with cryptocurrency and digital assets across multiple blockchains.  

Don’t let the challenges hold you back from the benefits of the blockchain. Contact us today!