Metaplex is steadily establishing itself as a leading standard for digital assets on Solana. With Metaplex introducing its Digital Asset Standard (DAS) API, developers now have access to a powerful tool to build on the blockchain faster and simpler.
Let’s explore what the Solana DAS API offers and how to integrate it into your workflow.
DAS API for Solana: Key takeaways
The DAS API by Metaplex is designed to address challenges with querying and interacting with digital asset data on the Solana blockchain.
Instead of querying raw Solana accounts or parsing on-chain data, developers can directly request ready-to-use data via the API.
DAS pre-indexes data, so instead of making multiple RPC calls, you get instant results via a simple API request.
The API allows a wide range of applications – from wallets to games – to interact with digital assets on Solana.
Top-tier Solana RPC providers implement DAS API that gives developers a much more efficient and scalable way to read blockchain data than using low-level RPC methods.
What is the DAS API?
The DAS API (Digital Asset Standard API) is a unified interface that allows developers to access and query digital assets (tokens and NFTs) on the Solana blockchain. It’s a game-changer for developers as it simplifies many common tasks.
Who created DAS API?
This open-source API is developed by Metaplex, the foundation for digital assets on Solana.
Metaplex is deeply integrated into the ecosystem. It provides a suite of standards, a library of audited smart contracts (MPL), and developer tools (including DAS API) that make it easier to integrate digital assets into blockchain applications.
Source: Metaplex
Most NFTs and fungible assets on Solana are minted using their standards. Major applications in the Solana ecosystems rely on its infrastructure:
- Memecoins: Platforms like Pump.fun use Metaplex’s Token Metadata program to standardize metadata;
- DeFi: Wallets & DEXs (e.g. Raydium, Phantom) use it to fetch asset data;
- Gaming: Many Solana-based games (e.g. Star Atlas) create and manage in-game assets via Metaplex;
- DePIN networks use Metaplex’s cNFT standard to represent their physical infrastructure components (nodes, devices, etc.) on the blockchain.
Metaplex builds and maintains the digital asset infrastructure. Their decentralized data indexing layer, Aura, makes sure that all the data is indexed and available. The DAS API ties it all together by providing a way for applications to read this data.
How Metaplex DAS API works
Unlike EVM blockchains, Solana does not natively support view functions that are useful for reading or aggregating data stored in smart contracts. To find all tokens owned by an address or all holders of a specific NFT collection on SVM, developers would have to make multiple RPC calls and parse raw blockchain data.
The DAS API lets developers retrieve everything they need in one API request for any asset type supported by Metaplex.
Here’s how it works:
- When querying DAS API, the request is first routed through Metaplex Digital Asset RPC infrastructure.
- Indexing allows it to serve aggregated and pre-processed data without requiring additional computation on-chain.
- It returns structured data in JSON format that applications can understand and use.
The API is particularly valuable for developers and applications dealing with compressed NFTs. Since cNFTs store minimal on-chain data, the Metaplex indexer ensures all of the data related to cNFTs remains accessible.
Aside from that, DAS API makes fetching any NFT data significantly faster and more efficient with fewer RPC calls and reduced latency.
The list of Solana DAS API methods
DAS API provides a much easier experience for operations like:
- Finding all NFTs in a collection;
- Fetching metadata and attributes;
- Verifying ownership;
- Making a list of assets grouped by different criteria.
Here’s a complete list of methods that it currently supports:
- ‘getAsset’: Fetches token metadata and other details by ID;
- ‘getAssetProof’: Provides the Merkle tree proof of a compressed NFT;
- ‘getAssetsByAuthority’: Retrieves a list of assets linked to an authority address;
- ‘getAssetsByCreator’: Finds assets created by a given address;
- ‘getAssetsByGroup’: Useful for retrieving all assets in a collection;
- ‘getAssetsByOwner’: Shows all the assets in the wallet;
- ‘searchAssets’: Gets a list of assets based on attributes or custom filtering conditions.
Please refer to the official Metaplex documentation to explore the full functionality of the API.
How to use DAS API on Solana
The DAS API client is not a standalone package but an extension of Umi, a TypeScript Solana SDK built by Metaplex. If you already run a full Solana node and want to use the Metaplex DAS API, you'll need to have Umi installed and add the DAS API plugin to it:
npm install @metaplex-foundation/digital-asset-standard-api
If you prioritize performance, reliability, and ease of integration, GetBlock’s Solana RPC node comes pre-configured with DAS API support.
Here’s how to access Metaplex DAS API, step by step:
- Log in to your GetBlock account;
- Switch to your Dedicated Nodes dashboard;
- Select Solana Pro with Mainnet as your desired network;
- When configuring your node, make sure to enable the free “DAS API” add-on;
- Add other features or optimize node settings to fit your app’s needs;
- Proceed to the checkout screen to confirm your order.
Once your node is deployed and live, you can interact with DAS API via your personal Solana Mainnet RPC node with no extra steps and setups in between. Simply generate your Solana RPC URL and start sending requests using available methods.
Code example
Here’s a cURL example of the request to the ‘getAssetsByOwner’ endpoint for testing:
curl --location --request POST 'https://go.getblock.io//' \ --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \ --data-raw '{ "jsonrpc": "2.0", "id": "getblock.io", "method": "getAssetsByOwner", "params": { "ownerAddress": " " } }'
With GetBlock's Solana Pro service, developers benefit from reliable interactions with the Metaplex DAS API and superior performance metrics.
Read more: https://getblock.io/blog/getblock-adds-solana-pro-rpc/
Summing up
Metaplex’s DAS API makes working with digital assets on Solana easier and faster than ever before. Instead of dealing with complex queries, developers can access everything they need with simple API requests. If you're developing NFT marketplaces, wallets, portfolio trackers, gaming, metaverse apps, and analytics tools on Solana, this tool is worth checking out.
