The ACES team has been working hard putting together the specifications for an SDK for developers to begin interacting with ARK and Encoded Listeners (blockchain interoperability). There are two separate API specifications being released today, the Service API, and the Encoded Listener API. These serve as the blueprints for service integration across the platform. Developers can use these API Specifications to implement their own blockchain listeners and interoperability services for use in the upcoming ACES Marketplace.

The figure below shows an overview of the ACES platform and where these two components fit in the big picture. The two items in gold represent the components relevant to the release today.

As always, all projects associated with ARK and ACES are open source under MIT License.

ARK-ACES Service API

The ACES Service API Specification defines the API interface for contract execution services. SDKs are available in Java, Go, PHP, JavaScript, Python, and C#.

The Service API provides a blueprint that enables the development of ACES blockchain interoperability services and provides the standard for integrating services into the ACES Marketplace. The specification defines the rules for making API calls to a service. It tells consumers how to get information about the service, including it’s health status, information about the service and it’s provider, what parameters the contract accepts. It also allows consumers to create contracts and track contract information such as the globally unique Contract ID, creation date, status, and expiration date (if applicable).

ARK-ACES Encoded Listener API

The ACES Encoded Listener API Specification defines the API interface for blockchain listeners. SDKs are available in Java, Go, PHP, JavaScript, Python, and C#.

The Encoded Listener API provides a way for all the different blockchain transaction events to be easily consumed via a common REST-ful API. The API allows consumers to create subscriptions and receive blockchain events in real-time using Webhook callbacks.

What’s next

The ACES team is working on a documentation website that describes in detail how these APIs can be implemented and consumed. We are also building an implementation of the Encoded Listener API for ARK so that users can start taking advantage of this technology.