Grindery’s Gateway to Web3
When we started Grindery, our intent wasn’t to build the best Web3 tool for payouts, tracking work, offering browser notifications for deposits, or anything else. Our aim was higher. We wanted to build a piece of fundamental Web3 infrastructure. With Grindery Gateway, we’ve done just that.
But before we talk about how it works, let’s dive into why we built it.
Fundamental Web3 Infrastructure
When we originally started the project and seeking funding, we approached Binance Labs, and became a part of their S4 Incubator, and told them that we were going to build a fundamental piece of Web3 infrastructure. We called it a “Zapier for Web3,” in essence, an automator to connect Web3 with Web2. We then set ourselves to approaching DAOs in a bull market. This was our plan.
Along the way, our perspective changed.
DAOs Are Dormant
Our intent was to approach financing from a lean perspective and rely on grants from blockchains because it would generate a lot of synergies in the ecosystem. What we learned was that in this bear market, there are still lots of activities going on. There’s still financing available, investors are moving around, but grant programs have dried out considerably and DAOs are seemingly dormant, if not close to being dead.
Not that we’re really giving up on them. They are critical pieces of infrastructure and a part of the future that we want to see. However, it’s likely from what we got from the information available to us, our research, and talking to dozens and dozens of DAOs, is that 95% of DAOs that were created in the last 18 months have zero activity. We know they’re not dead, because DAOs don’t disappear, but there’s no life in them.
That was the first indication that a pivot was needed. DAOs aren’t the ones we should be talking to. Not yet.
Gas Payment Pains
The second was during our R&D phase. While in the midst of R&D for our new product, we had a major breakthrough. The hardest part of building our automated solution isn’t the workflows themselves, it’s paying for them. This is a major pain point. There’s no existing way to allow for automatic gas payments on any chain, or cross chain, when it comes to doing transactions. Without solving that, no one is going to care about an automation tool.
That became the first priority.
As a result, we built a prototype that we believe can be scaled and maintain security for cross chain payments at a much higher level than what you see today with the traditional bridges, which are designed to move large amounts of money and high frequency.
While this system, and this is where the innovation lies, can handle micro payments and smaller payments and, and higher volume, and we can rely on a lot of on-chain mechanisms for security.
So this will, in the end, not only allow us to do gas payments on behalf of the user, but it will also allow payments through third party merchants just like Stripe does. So, for example, instead of paying ANKR in ANKR tokens, we can facilitate the gas payment in ETH, from Polygon. Just with a few clicks, and with maximum security.
Think of it as being similar to how we would use a credit card internationally without having to worry what the recipient is receiving in terms of currency with similar on-chain security properties.
Embedded Systems Integrations
We also had a third epiphany: for the longest time, we were referring to this project as building a “Zapier for Web3.” While Grindery Gateway fits that definition in spirit, that’s not the reality. We’re not actually building a Zapier, because having a centralized service isn’t a part of our endgame. Instead, we’re unbundling it, decentralizing it, decoding it. We want to bring embedded integrations into dApps, without making the process inaccessible to the average Web3 citizen.
Our intent is to bring the power of Web3 to systems integrations with:
A universal protocol with payments in its DNA
Reusable open source components to implement and adapt
A distributed network of relays to power integrations and exchange data.
It’s convenient, reusable and offers economic incentives, thus creating a sustainable network effect that can make this the dominant integration protocol out there. This is what we’re working towards.
But, we do have to start somewhere, so we’ve built the Grindery Gateway: a Web3 API for no/low coders.
Grindery Gateway With Zapier
While developing our Web3 API and differentiating ourselves from Zapier, we decided, ironically enough, to build our first integration with the automator.
What this means is:
Anyone can connect to 20+ blockchains with no code.
The UI is entirely in a 3rd party low-code environment/tool i.e. Zapier
It’s a hosted service paid in fiat or crypto currency.
We can promote this to low/no code communities starting with Zapier, then moving on to Workato, Airtable, Slack, Hubspot, etc…
Instead of building a workflow in Grindery, then another in Zapier, we want to allow the user to create the entire workflow in Zapier, without having to switch applications.
How it works
Instead of going into Grindery and configuring triggers and actions and actions then going into Zapier and connecting the two systems, you only need Zapier. Now, a user can go into Grindery, create an account, fund the account with a credit card and/or a tokens, close the window, go into Zapier, and do all of the automation there.
This is the simplest way for anyone to leverage Web3, not having to worry about paying APIs, not having to code anything, not worrying about gas payments, and being able to do this with their choice of fiat or crypto. And it only takes 4 steps:
- Go to the Grindery Gateway page and sign-in/up. Create your account and fund it with a credit card or tokens. Then close the window.
- Sign-in/up to Zapier and connect Gateway.
- Start configuring your automations in Zapier.
- Publish your Zap, and watch it go.
Our no-code web3 API allows users to not only create new workflows between Web2 and Web3 inside one UI, it also allows a user to mint NFTs as well. By creating web3 technology with no-code tools, Grindery not only reduces the complexity and cost of building blockchain solutions, but also allows the no-code community to push forward on web3 innovation.
From here, we have our sights set on other automation platforms and tools to extend this to Slack, Hubspot, Airtable, and so on. That’s just Phase One.
There are dozens of frameworks out there, and Web2 ISVs, that are ready for an integration of our protocol.
Web2, meet Web3
Contact us if you’d like to know more about Grindery Gateway.