Ava Labs, today announced the beta release of Chainlink Functions—a serverless developer platform that empowers anyone to easily connect a smart contract to any Web2 API—on Avalanche Fuji testnet. Developers on Avalanche can now leverage Chainlink’s highly secure and reliable network to seamlessly build new and more advanced Web3 applications.
Chainlink Functions unlocks an entirely new frontier of Web3 and Web2 integrations. Until now, Web3 developers couldn’t connect their smart contracts to existing Web2 APIs to access social media signals, AI computation, messaging services, and more. Conversely, Web2 developers couldn’t leverage their existing infrastructure when getting started building a Web3 app. Chainlink Functions provides this key piece of missing infrastructure developers need to build sophisticated applications that take advantage of the best of both worlds.
“The integration of Chainlink Functions unlocks a multitude of new and exciting smart contract use cases for the Avalanche ecosystem as it simplifies the developer experience of connecting Web3 apps with Web2 data sources,” said John Nahas, Vice President of Business Development at Ava Labs. “Developers can now connect their smart contract to any Web2 API in minutes to unlock the next big use case for Web3 while taking advantage of both the proven security and reliability of the Chainlink Network.”
Chainlink Functions acts as a decentralized compute runtime to test, simulate, and run custom logic off-chain for Web3 applications—akin to a more trust-minimized and blockchain-enabled version of existing cloud-based serverless solutions such as AWS Lambda, GCP CloudFunctions, and Cloudflare Workers. By taking advantage of the blockchain industry’s most time-tested infrastructure for oracle connectivity and computation, developers can focus on their decentralized applications while being able to rely on the connectivity, security, and reliability of the Chainlink Network. Furthermore, Chainlink Functions is a truly self-serve platform, meaning developers can fulfill their external data and compute needs without having to interface with node operators.
“We’re excited to expand the suite of Web3 services available on Avalanche to include Chainlink Functions, empowering Avalanche developers to connect their smart contracts to existing Web2 APIs,” said Kemal El Moujahid, Chief Product Officer at Chainlink Labs. “The seamless connectivity of Chainlink Functions makes it easy for developers to combine smart contracts with powerful Web2 APIs and data sources to unlock a new frontier of exciting capabilities and applications.”
Smart contract developers building on Avalanche can now use Chainlink Functions to easily connect Web2 APIs and cloud services in their smart contracts. Chainlink Functions can also be combined with other high-quality Chainlink services available on Avalanche, including Chainlink Data Feeds, Chainlink VRF, and Chainlink Automation.
If you’re a developer and would like to access the beta version of Chainlink Functions, sign up here. Also, check out the Chainlink Functions developer documentation and join the Chainlink Discord for any technical questions or feedback.
