Center Changelog: June 2023

It’s been a busy month — we’re so excited to share what we’ve been up to.

This month, we were hard at work building new features on top of our V2 API.

Reminder: In case you missed it, we announced the launch of the Center API V2 at the very beginning of June. This release was a game-changer — putting the fastest, most accurate and most powerful NFT into the hands of our users.

Please read on to learn more about new V2 endpoints we’ve shipped, new chains we’ve added, usability improvements we’ve made, and more. At the end, we spotlight a fascinating conversation we had with one of the creators of the ERC-1155 standard.

As always, reach out to support@center.app if you have any questions or feedback. Happy building!

The Center API V2 is the next-generation NFT API — we took everything our users loved about V1 and built on it to create the fastest, most accurate and most powerful NFT API available anywhere.

What does that mean for our users?

• Pristine accuracy: We seamlessly handle and categorize all transaction types, and reflect accurate data mere seconds after new blocks have been added to the chain.
• Faster response times: We know that speed is important. That's why we built our new systems to be even faster than V1.
• More data types: Even if we haven't seen a particular asset or media type before, our infrastructure automatically adjusts to properly index, analyze and serve it to our users.
• More powerful, and safer, rendering: Our V2 renderer handles more media types (audio and video) and allows users to customize media like never before. Users can specify precise dimensions and file types for NFT media. This also means users can ensure that malicious media files are never shown in their application by transforming media to “safe” file types (e.g., jpg).

We shipped the first batch of V2 endpoints at launch:

• Show NFT Metadata: View all metadata associated with an NFT, including traits, collection information and media previews.
• List NFT Media: Retrieve a list of all media available for a specified NFT, including video and audio. Use this endpoint to decide which media to render.
• Render NFT Media: Specify exactly how you would like to render media for a specified NFT. Users can render media with custom dimensions and file types, and can easily transform NFT media to new formats if desired.
• NFTs Owned by Address: View all assets owned by an address. This endpoint seamlessly handles both ERC721 and ERC1155 tokens and updates in seconds to reflect new blocks.
• Owners of NFT Collection: Retrieve all owners of a specified NFT collection.

Read more and check out examples here.

We’re pleased to announce a new V2 endpoint that allows users to retrieve metadata for up to 100 NFTs in a single call. This helps to streamline workflows and improve performance by greatly reducing the number of API calls our users have to make to fetch NFT metadata.

Check out an example of how easy it is to retrieve metadata for multiple NFTs with a single call

We're excited to share that the Center V2 Renderer supports "Safe Rendering", which enables our users to remove malicious elements from NFT media before showing them in their applications.

These types of attacks can be major problems for applications that allow users to view NFT media. With the Center API V2, you can now protect your users from these attacks.

An example (with a non-malicious NFT!) showing the conversion of an SVG file to a JPG and PNG

With Center, users can specify precise file types before rendering (.png, .jpg and .gif). The Center Renderer will rasterize the media to convert it to the desired file type, which will remove any malicious elements so that users are protected. It’s as easy as adding the desired extension to the end of your API request!

Audio and video NFTs are becoming increasingly common. Unfortunately, rendering these in NFT applications can be a tricky problem for builders.

With Center, it’s as easy as specifying a media path. We provide all media associated with an NFT in an easy-to-parse format (via our List Media or Show NFT Metadata endpoints), and our users can select which media they would like to render. Simply specify that media path when making a call to our Render NFT endpoint, and we’ll take care of the rest.

Check out a few examples:

1. Love Letter #481
2. Android Summer #1
3. Silent Noise, Episode 1

Questions on how to do this in your application? Reach out to support@center.app.

We are excited to announce several new chains are now supported by the Center API V2:

• Ethereum Sepolia
• Ethereum Goerli
• Zora Mainnet
• Base Goerli

Many more chains to come!

Have a chain you would like to see? Please let us know at support@center.app.

We are always striving to make our endpoints as useful as possible for builders. This month, we made some oft-requested improvements:

1. NFTs Owned by Address can now be sorted by block number. This makes it easy to sort assets within a wallet based on the time they were received. Give it a try!
2. We added more information to our NFT metadata response, including a media array that provides all associated media files for a particular NFT. For NFTs with multiple media files (e.g., audio and image), this array provides the information necessary to dictate to our renderer which media file you would like to render. This information was formerly only available via our List NFT Media endpoint — with this update, you can reduce the number of calls you need to make to render complex media.

You can always monitor improvements we make in real-time by looking at our changelog.

Looking for the data we provide, but in a slightly different format? Wish we provided more information in a particular response? Please keep the suggestions coming at support@center.app!

This month we took a deep-dive on the origin of the ERC1155 standard. We even chatted with one of the original creators of the standard — give it a read!

Worried about how your application will handle ERC1155s? With Center, you don’t have to be. The Center API V2 seamlessly handles a variety of standards, including ERC1155.

Bugs are no fun. We squashed several this month:

1. We fixed a bug that was causing issues rendering some NFTs from ERC721a collections.
2. We fixed a bug in our renderer that was causing SVG re-sizing to fail in some cases.
3. We fixed several bugs that were preventing us from properly rendering certain edge cases.
4. We improved our error messages.

Notice any bugs? Please let us know at support@center.app!