Jul 20, 2022 at 05:48“Blockchain is a relatively new and 100% trendy industry. But the thing is, on a business level, it still works by the same rules.” That is the opinion of Dennis C. Martín, an entrepreneur and founder of Dennis Technologies. His product Maki, an API for the Bitcoin blockchain, is “simple and handy.” It might be exactly what the community needs — just a tool you can take and use without the overwhelming number of functions.
In his interview for Buidlb, Dennis tells us how he self-studied blockchain and why he works on his product without a team.
At first, Maki was developed just for learning
“I have an entrepreneurship background, but I have never worked with blockchain before — my biggest project was a fitness center. I founded that business eight years ago and was working on it for five years. Then I decided to get a degree in Economics and Finance and also got interested in programming. After one year, I started my company, Dennis Technologies. It is a small company, just me” he says with a smile.
“I am not going to lie, Bitcoin caught my attention because, at that time, it was on everyone’s lips. So I monitored what was going on in the industry and decided to learn more about how it works technically.”
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“It was two years ago, at that time, I had already been learning programming for one year. I’ve developed websites and APIs in Python. In this industry, I am also a self-studier. And it is funny that I used so many courses and books to learn web development, but for blockchain, just three resources were comprehensive enough. I used:
- https://developer.bitcoin.org — The official Bitcoin documentation
- https://github.com/bitcoinbook/bitcoinbook — An open source book
- https://learnmeabitcoin.com — An indie website that explains Bitcoin visually and in simple terms.”
“I am still learning now. I like to do it in practice and set development challenges for myself. And actually, this project, Maki, was also a learning challenge at first. But once I started to develop it, I realized that I could make it available to people since it is quite useful for other developers.”
It’s a simple tool, and that is the project’s benefit
“The Maki project is a simple API to let users interact with the Bitcoin blockchain without provisioning Bitcoin nodes. With this tool, you can get transaction data, obtain a block header or get the current state of the blockchain. It’s a complementary instrument mainly for researchers and developers; for example, to develop an app that relies on Bitcoin blockchain information without running a full node.”
“The main companies that provide this kind of service are Blockchain.com and Blockchair. However, the API for them is kind of secondary, and my main focus is the API itself. That is why the tool is simple but handy.”
“The tool is simple also because I am working on it alone. Why so? Well, it’s just how that’s happened. In my social circle, people are mostly interested in investing in Bitcoin, not the technical stuff. But I would like to let people in this project in the future. I really like to work in a team; still, now my priority is other things.”
“Now I try to optimize the API and the endpoints. Also, I’m building a data aggregator to complement the API. By doing so, users could get historical statistics of the Bitcoin blockchain in an easier way. And I try to build the explorer and improve the product’s website and social networks. As for the team, I will have to think about it, maybe in a few months.”
Promoting is important, but if people do not understand what the product is about, you’ll fail
“I spent 4–5 hours on the project daily, since in the mornings I have to go to the university, and also dedicate some time to the project on weekends.”
“I started my work eight months ago, from the structure of the API and defining the endpoints. To understand it better and clarify everything, I used drawings and notes — I always do stuff like that, that is my way of working.”
“Once I had the API, I started to make the website and social media accounts. Immediately after publishing the website, I posted the product on ProductHunt, Reddit and Twitter.”
“I have to say, promoting it is the most difficult part. But I think that a good product is still the most important. I mean, I am surely trying to figure out marketing and testing paid promotions now, but I believe that when you have a great product, it is about letting people talk about it. So I am focusing on optimizing Maki, and I will be happy to receive feedback from people. I have already gotten some from ProductHunt, and I am open to more opinions.”
“I strongly believe that we need more products in the blockchain community that are simple, because it is so hard for non-technical (and sometimes even technical) people to understand what blockchain is. This greatly inhibits the development of the industry. Instead of innovating more, let’s sort out what we already have and tell people about it.”
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