For ARK’s 3rd technical blog post we will discuss Webhooks, a new primary component of the upcoming Core v2 release.

Webhooks implementation is a realization of Ark Improvement Proposal — AIP15.

A Webhook is an API concept that’s growing in popularity. As more and more of what we do on the web can be described by events, Webhooks are becoming even more applicable. They are a useful and resource-light way to implement event reactions. A Webhook (also called a web callback or HTTP push API) allows an app to provide other applications with real-time information. A Webhook delivers data as it happens (providing data immediately) as opposed to typical APIs where you poll for data very frequently in order to get it real-time. Webhooks are much more efficient for both provider and consumer. The only drawback is the difficulty of initially setting them up.

Webhooks enable ARK blockchain app developers to listen to blockchain events in a simple manner (by subscribing to events and waiting for callbacks). Polling is just wasteful and inefficient for both the client and server side. On average, 98.5% of polls are wasted and increase the workload on the server, making Webhooks much more efficient.

Webhooks are an integral part of ARK Core v2 due to the ever growing ecosystem and traffic increase. They will allow for traffic reduction and greatly optimize overhead.

For users, Webhooks are a way to receive important information when it happens, rather than repeatedly checking for data and receiving nothing useful in return. Webhooks have tremendous potential to automate and optimize tasks. For starters we selected the following events you can subscribe to via API v2 call (see photo below).