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Categories definitions
Use this guide when adding or updating offers and not sure in which category this offer should belong to.
Classify an offer by its primary product job, not by side features or marketing language.
Ask yourself a question "will it be useful for a blockchain developer to have this in that category?"
- What is the offer mainly sold to do?
- If two categories seem valid, pick the one better suiting to the descriptions below.
- If still not sure - better ask a team in Discussions Q&A first, before spending your time on PR that may be closed simply because the category was poorly chosen.
A provider is the accountable entity (company, foundation, DAO, project organization or even an individual) that officially owns or operates an offer listed in Chain.Love.
In plain terms: “Who is responsible for this offer?”
- A company with official site/docs and branded products (e.g., infra provider, oracle company)
- A protocol foundation/DAO with official product docs and maintained service surface
- A project org operating a distinct infrastructure/service with clear ownership
- A single individual well-known in the ecosystem that maintains the project (like Vitalik, OffcierCia, etc.)
- A random GitHub user with no formal project identity or not widely known to public
- A blockchain/network name used as provider when an independent operator actually runs the service
- Official website or docs naming the entity
- Official repo/org linkage
- Clear ownership/operation statement for the offer
Products focused on aggregated blockchain insights: metrics, trends, dashboards, historical analysis, and query surfaces for ecosystem/business intelligence.
- TVL/volume/user activity dashboards
- Protocol/app KPI analytics products
- Historical aggregated analytics APIs
- Transaction/block/address explorers (belongs to explorers)
- Raw RPC endpoints (belongs to apis)
- Pure security alerting tools (belongs to security)
This offer likely belongs to this category if:
- It transforms the data received from blockchain to provide information otherwise not directly accessible to the user
- It provides a visual or programmatic data representation
Hosted programmatic blockchain endpoints that provide insights into the blockchain data.
- RPC providers for chain read/write operations
- Chain data API gateways
- API wrapper that provides aggregations or different views on the blockchain data.
- Client libraries wrapping APIs (belongs to sdks)
- Full deployment platforms where API is secondary (belongs to platforms)
- UI-first products with only incidental API access
- APIs that provide access to the platform features, but not to the blockchain data.
This offer likely belongs to this category if:
- API access is featured, not hidden
- API grants access to the blockchain data
Protocols/systems that transfer assets, data, or messages across chains/L2s (canonical or third-party).
- L1<>L2 and cross-chain token bridges
- Cross-chain messaging + settlement layers
- Fiat purchase/sell rails (belongs to ramps)
- Same-chain DEX swap tools with no cross-chain movement
- Any sort of exchanges that require an account to transfer funds
This offer likely belongs to this category if:
- User don't need an account (beyond wallet connection) to perform a transfer
- Transfer is capable of moving money across chains (even if swapping tokens)
Search and inspection products for blockchain state/events: blocks, transactions, addresses, contracts, logs, tokens.
- Block explorers with tx/address/block search and details
- Contract/token inspection portals with event/state visibility
- Chain-state browsing interfaces
- Portfolio trackers without deep chain-state inspection
- Analytics-only dashboards lacking explorer primitives
- Generic API products without explorer UI/functionality
This offer likely belongs to this category if:
- It focuses on providing detailed information about transactions, blocks and addresses
- It has a word "explorer" or "scan" in the name or primary description
Services that distribute small-value testnet tokens for development/testing.
- Official ecosystem testnet drip pages
- Faucet APIs with anti-abuse controls
- Wallet/social-gated test token distributors
- "Marketing" faucets - faucets that claim to exist on every chain, but rarely, if ever, works there.
- Mainnet grants/airdrops
- Mining/staking reward systems
This offer likely belongs to this category if:
- You personally was able to receive testnet tokens using that tool
Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers exposing Web3 tools/capabilities to AI clients via MCP-compatible interfaces.
- MCP servers exposing wallet actions, chain reads, protocol interactions
- AI-consumable Web3 tool servers explicitly MCP-compatible
- Non-MCP AI APIs
- Generic plugins without MCP protocol support
- Agent/chat products with no MCP server implementation
This offer likely belongs to this category if:
- It is an MCP designed to be consumed by AI agents
Infrastructure that delivers external or derived data to smart contracts (price feeds, randomness, attestations, proofs).
- Onchain price feed networks
- VRF/randomness delivery services
- Onchain verifiable data/attestation pipelines
- Offchain-only analytics APIs not intended for contract consumption
- Monitoring/alerting products with no oracle delivery path
- General data dashboards without smart contract data delivery
This offer likely belongs to this category if:
- Using that offer you can gather the off-chain information on-chain
Integrated multi-component developer platforms for building/deploying/running Web3 apps.
- End-to-end app deployment platforms (deploy + infra workflows)
- Developer platforms combining storage/compute/pipelines/tooling
- Unified build/run environments for Web3 products
- Standalone RPC endpoint products (belongs to apis)
- Single narrow-focused website that may belong to one single category
- Word "platform" is rather used for marketing
- Website where you can't login
This offer likely belongs to this category if:
- Using only that platform you may build a fully functioning Web3 application
- It significantly simplifies multiple aspects of dApp development (for example - APIs + Smart Contracts)
- It should belong to 4+ (rarely - 3+) different categories, but it is all combined in one platform
Fiat↔crypto conversion rails offered directly or embedded via API/widget flows.
- Card/bank buy/sell crypto flows with compliance checks
- Embedded on-ramp/off-ramp widget/API providers
- Payment-rail conversion services integrated in wallets/apps
- Cross-chain bridges (belongs to bridges)
- Same-chain swaps/DEX tools
- Broad exchange products unless specific listed offer is the ramp solution
Installable developer libraries/frameworks used directly in app code to integrate Web3 functionality.
- JS/TS/Go/Rust/Python SDKs for wallet/contract/chain/protocol integration
- Client frameworks designed for embedding in developer codebases
- Package-manager distributed integration libraries
- Hosted endpoint products themselves (belongs to apis)
- No-code deployment products (belongs to platforms)
- UI-only products with no to little developer package artifact
- SDKs designed to simplify access to the specific platform, not to the blockchain networks
This offer likely belongs to this category if:
- It is available on public well-known package managers like NPM
- It allows you to interact with the blockchain
Web3 security-focused products/services for prevention, detection, response, and assurance.
- Exploit/threat monitoring and alerting products
- Transaction simulation/risk-check systems
- Security analytics/audit/incident response tooling
- Service companies providing audit on-demand
- General analytics without security mission
- Generic infra uptime observability only
- Non-security developer tooling mislabeled as security
Data persistence/storage offerings for Web3 apps (object/blob/content-addressed/decentralized storage layers and gateways).
- Decentralized storage networks
- Decentralized storage technologies used in Web3 (IPFS, etc.)
- Managed storage products focused on Web3
- Object/blob persistence products that is focused on Web3/blockchain
- Generic infra offerings with no clear Web3 focus
- Indexing/query analytics products where storage is not the product
User-facing custody/signing/account-control products for managing assets and authorizing blockchain actions.
- Mobile/browser/desktop/hardware wallets
- Smart-account wallets with account/session/signing UX
- Consumer-facing signing/custody applications
- Any sort of exchanges
- Backend signing APIs with no end-user wallet UX
- Explorer portfolio pages without custody/signing controls
- Read-only account dashboards with no authorization capability
This offer likely belongs to this category if:
- User may access and send their funds using that tool
- User has a way to recover their funds if the service provider is dead
- There is a UI to perform actions with your funds