Overview
Anvil is a software development agency that builds blockchain applications for other companies. Brands that want digital collectibles, loyalty schemes, or token-based payments hire Anvil to design, build, and run the technical side1. It also sells the toolkit it uses on those jobs, so teams with their own developers can build the same things without hiring an agency at all2.
Anvil works on Cardano. It offers the Anvil API, a set of web addresses an app can call to handle the blockchain plumbing, so a developer can mint tokens, assemble transactions, or set up staking using ordinary web code rather than Haskell3. Alongside client work, the company runs the Wayup marketplace as a product of its own, built with Anvil's own SDK2.
Key Features
- Ship Cardano features with ordinary web code. The Anvil API handles transaction building, token minting, calls to smart contracts (the on-chain programs that enforce a transaction's rules), and delegation to stake pools and governance representatives. It also covers multi-signature approval, where several parties must sign one transaction, and absorbs Cardano's hard-fork upgrades so an integration keeps working4.
- Copyable examples in your language. Anvil's documentation carries worked quick starts in TypeScript, Python, Go, Rust, Swift, and Kotlin, plus ESP32 code for small internet-connected devices, and the API documentation index lists the rest5.
- Anvil's own fee falls on the end user. Anvil documents that its per-action charge is paid by the person making the transaction rather than the developer who integrated the API, and asks integrators to say so in their own interface6.
- Connect a wallet in one library. Weld, Anvil's open-source wallet connector, lets a web app ask a visitor's wallet to approve an action. It connects wallets on Cardano, Ethereum, Polygon, Solana, and Bitcoin, with React, Svelte, and plain JavaScript bindings7. The Cardano Foundation developer portal lists it among Cardano wallet tools8.
- Hand the whole build to the team. Anvil's published client work names what it delivered: Chadswap, an over-the-counter trading marketplace; Cardavest, a token vesting tool that releases tokens to holders on a set schedule; and Coco Isle, a shoe company whose customers mint an NFT with each purchase1.
What to Expect
You land on an agency site, with a developer account area behind it for issuing API keys. The main pages set out the service lines on offer: the API, minting, rewards and loyalty, a software development kit, marketplaces, and custom builds, three of them ending in a contact link, while the API, development kit, and marketplace cards link on to the API overview, the documentation, and the marketplace itself2.
Developers get the most self-serve route. You can open a free entry-level plan that bills per transaction, per mint, and per contract call instead of by monthly subscription3, then work from two documentation sites, one covering the API4 and one covering the development kit9.
Businesses without a technical team are the other audience. The work page names clients and spells out what was built for each, which is the quickest way to judge whether Anvil has handled something close to your own problem1. The company publishes code in public under the Cardano-Forge organization on GitHub10, including libraries funded through Project Catalyst, Cardano's community grant program11.
