Challenges with selling in an open-source world

Blockchains enable ‘lego’ building (composability), better than how APIs work in ‘Web2’ because most corporate networks like X have full control over what data is available via ‘the API’ and blockchains have free, immutable data. The lego blocks are ruled by open code and are therefore more trustworthy than a corporation. 

The problem with today’s open-source blockchain infrastructure is that it’s all very rudimentary in practice. Businesses work with vendors for their blockchain needs but typically partner with teams who offer very basic data / services so they can build the rest. These tools are usually very bare bones with the multitude of data providers that sit at the bottom of the stack (RPC node providers, data indexing, rollup as-a-service). This is where middleware providers should thrive, but due to the architecture and culture of the industry it makes selling these services harder. 

With businesses incentivized to build everything in-house, middleware providers have to find unique tactics to overcome the many challenges they face on the road to securing customers. 

I’ll be covering those challenges and how to overcome them in this series. Follow along here and on X if you’re interested in learning more about navigating sales in our increasingly digital world.