Covalent

About Covalent

Covalent provides a unified Application Programming Interface (API) that gives developers and analysts access to indexed data across numerous blockchain networks. The company was founded in 2018 by Ganesh Swami and Levi Aul. The initial concept was developed during a hackathon in 2017, leading to a commercial service aimed at addressing the complex infrastructure challenges that hinder mainstream blockchain adoption.

Ganesh Swami, the CEO, has a background that includes experience with on-premise workloads moving to the cloud, a perspective he applies to crypto networks. He and CTO Levi Aul lead a team with expertise in databases and distributed systems. The company’s core technology is built to retrieve, index, and standardize on-chain data, making it accessible through a single API endpoint. This no-code solution is designed to save developers time and resources by eliminating the need to interact with multiple, disparate blockchain-specific APIs.

The business operates in the B2B sector, serving a wide array of clients including DeFi protocols, NFT projects, data aggregators, and digital wallets. Prominent clients like CoinGecko, Rainbow Wallet, and Zerion use Covalent's API to access comprehensive historical transaction data, token balances, and NFT metadata. Covalent's business model involves users paying for data queries, with revenue distributed to network operators who stake Covalent's native token, CQT, to ensure data integrity and network security. The platform features the Unified API, which is its main product, along with the "Ethereum Wayback Machine," a project focused on ensuring long-term data availability. The API is structured to handle various query types, from general on-chain data like token balances to protocol-specific information.

Covalent has secured significant funding through several rounds. After an initial $3.1 million round in 2020, it raised an additional $2 million in March 2021 from investors including Hashed Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, and Binance Labs. More recently, a strategic funding round in June 2024 brought in $5 million, led by RockTree Capital, to fuel expansion into Asia. In total, the company has raised over $10.1 million from more than 30 institutional investors.