Developing solutions for passionate coders: The Bitcoin Bridge talks to Codugh’s Shashank Singhal

Sometimes the best ideas are the simplest ones. Take Codugh, winner of the second Bitcoin SV Hackathon in 2019. Their solution: to connect API developers with API consumers and monetise the relationship is straightforward but all the more useful because of that. Shashank Singhal, Codugh’s co-founder, is on The Bitcoin Bridge this week to share his vision for the company.

Codugh is an API marketplace, a place where developers can post their APIs on a public platform and earn money when it’s used. The marketplace, which launched publicly in 2021, incentivises developers to share their code with real time compensation.

While API marketplaces are not new, Codugh has utilised the BSV blockchain’s capacity for micropayments to create an innovative new service. Instead of developers paying subscription fees, Codugh users get paid a microtransaction every time their API is used.

Shashank says, “We want API developers all over the world to know that they can just do what they do best… they can write code and that we handle absolutely everything else.”

He explains that one of his motivations to build Codugh was to empower passionate developers struggling to monetise their products. Shashank understands just how difficult it can be for coders who build amazing applications but find themselves getting bogged down in trying to market and secure their product.

“From what we’ve heard it actually ends up taking almost twice as long usually to build the entire account management system and analytics system and everything around the API than it does to build the software itself,” he says.

Codugh allows developers to focus on what they do best and access work that others have already done, for a small fee of course. It also empowers API developers, as they are paid whenever their code is used.

The company’s innovative business model has been turning heads in the BSV space since its inception in 2019. It has even attracted the attention of industry heavyweight TAAL Distributed Information Technologies Inc. (CSE:TAAL | FWB:9SQ1 | OTC: TAALF), who invested in the company in July 2020.

He’s coy about the partnership but says that they have been working together on data storage and IOT products, hinting that “it will continue to be more apparent in the coming months how our synergy works.”

It’s not all been plain sailing for Codugh, though. Shashank reveals that one of his biggest obstacles is the “archaic” regulatory system in Australia. He says that regulators ask for a very high standard, with every single customer coming through the system needing to be identified and each transaction assessed and found to be above board.

Shashank would like to make the platform more accessible to non-BSV users, expanding the ecosystem and onboarding newbies into the BSV space. He hopes that this will benefit other BSV businesses as more people can get used to the enterprise blockchain.

Watch the full interview to hear Shashank’s thoughts on working in the BSV ecosystem, his hopes for the future of the digital currency and his plans for the upcoming CoinGeek Conference in New York.