Cumberland Labs releases a SaaS API for DeFi protocols and public blockchains

Cumberland Labs developed its own global API service after searching for a bridge between blockchains and DeFi protocols.

A new API tool has been released in beta by Cumberland Labs, the incubator division of the Chicago-based cryptocurrency trading firm Cumberland. This tool may make it easier to connect to blockchains and decentralized finance protocols.

According to Cumberland Labs, DRW Holdings LCC’s trading business Cumberland used to spend a lot of time manually and one-at-a-time connecting to different protocols.

As a result of failing to locate a tool to make these activities simpler, the company used its own developers and engineers from its incubation arm to create expand.network, an API service. Since November, the tool has been in beta testing and is now open to the general public.

When two different types of programming need to communicate, an application programming interface, or API, is utilized.

“We were investigating DeFi trading and looked for a tool that could connect to any DeFi protocol or blockchain, comparable to the ccxt library used for centralized exchanges. We were shocked to see that there was no such tool,” said Tama Churchouse, COO of Cumberland Labs, to Cointelegraph.

With the recently launched solution, developers will be able to communicate across various protocol APIs and software development kits (SDKs) by having read and write connections to important public blockchains and DeFi protocols.

The Web3 startup aims to address a long-standing problem in the crypto industry: ineffective cross-chain communication. It does not, however, address the same issues as cross-chain solutions. Although they “may seem similar on the surface,” they serve diverse functions, according to its CEO Demetrios Skalkotos.

“Cross-chain solutions basically make it easier for messages and tokens to be transferred between different chains. Expand. network, in comparison, offers connectivity to chains and protocols, providing a more complete and adaptable solution for navigating the DeFi world, he added.

The low-code tool will support both chains that are compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), such as Solana, Tron, NEAR, and Algorand, as well as non-EVM-compatible chains including Avalanche, Polygon, Cronos, Arbitrum, and Optimism. Aptos, Sui, Lido, LayerZero, and StarkNet will all soon be supported.

Cumberland Labs developed the platform and provided financing, resources, and consultancy. Later this year, if market conditions allow, the business might look for finance.

Skalkotos explained that his team’s funding-seeking strategy is to go after cryptocurrency seed and series A technological infrastructure investors as well as possible strategic investors.

More money is going towards developer-focused and interoperability solutions as the crypto industry develops. LayerZero Labs, a company that creates cross-chain messaging protocols, raised $120 million in April to broaden its market reach in the Asia-Pacific area. In March 2022, it had previously raised $135 million.