Media Chain

Mediachain (Mediachain Labs) was a decentralized universal media library and attribution protocol built on IPFS and blockchain technology, designed to let creators and applications collaborate on open metadata about creative works and track the provenance and ownership of online images and other media. Founded in 2016 with seed funding from Andreessen Horowitz and Union Square Ventures, the company was acqui-hired by Spotify in April 2017 to help build fair, blockchain-based royalty attribution for rightsholders. The company is now defunct and its primary domain (mediachain.io) is a parked page, but its open-source protocol, design documentation, Protocol Buffer definitions, and first-party client libraries (the `aleph`/`mcclient` JavaScript client on npm and the `mediachain-client` Python reader on PyPI) remain public under the github.com/mediachain organization. This profile was surfaced as an a16z portfolio company and enriched from its surviving open-source surface.

Media Chain is profiled on the APIs.io network. Tagged areas include Company, Media, Metadata, Blockchain, and Decentralized.

Media Chain’s developer surface includes documentation, CLI, and 7 more developer resources.

🌐 Visit website 📡 Source on GitHub

11.8/100 minimal ▬ flat Agent 0/100 human only Full breakdown ↓
scored 2026-07-27 · rubric v0.5

0 APIs

CompanyMediaMetadataBlockchainDecentralizedIPFSAttributionMusic

Kin Score

Kin Score How this is scored →
scored 2026-07-27 · rubric v0.5

Composite quality — 11.8/100 · minimal

Contract Quality 0.0 / 25

Developer Ergonomics 4.3 / 20

Commercial Clarity 0.0 / 20

Operational Transparency 0.7 / 13

Governance 0.0 / 12

Discoverability 6.8 / 10

Agent readiness — 0/100 · human only

Machine-Readable Contract 0 / 18

Agentic Access Contract 0 / 15

MCP Server 0 / 12

Machine-Readable Auth 0 / 10

Idempotency 0 / 9

Stable Error Semantics 0 / 8

Request/Response Examples 0 / 7

Rate-Limit Signaling 0 / 7

Typed Event Surface 0 / 6

Agent Skills 0 / 5

Well-Known Catalog 0 / 4

Consent & Bot Identity 0 / 3

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Resources

Documentation 1

Reference material describing how the API behaves

Documentation

Documentation

Build 5

SDKs, sample code, and the tooling you integrate with

GitHubOrganization

SourceCode

Packages

SDKs

CLI

Other 3

Properties that don't map to a standard resource type

Protobuf

Protobuf

Protobuf

Protobuf

Protobuf

Protobuf

Source (apis.yml)

aid: media-chain
accessModel:
  pricing: unknown
  onboarding: unknown
  trial: false
  try_now: false
  public: false
  label: Unknown
  confidence: low
  source: []
  generated: '2026-07-22'
  method: derived
image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/icons/media-chain.png
name: Media Chain
description: Mediachain (Mediachain Labs) was a decentralized universal media library and attribution protocol built on IPFS
  and blockchain technology, designed to let creators and applications collaborate on open metadata about creative works and
  track the provenance and ownership of online images and other media. Founded in 2016 with seed funding from Andreessen Horowitz
  and Union Square Ventures, the company was acqui-hired by Spotify in April 2017 to help build fair, blockchain-based royalty
  attribution for rightsholders. The company is now defunct and its primary domain (mediachain.io) is a parked page, but its
  open-source protocol, design documentation, Protocol Buffer definitions, and first-party client libraries (the `aleph`/`mcclient`
  JavaScript client on npm and the `mediachain-client` Python reader on PyPI) remain public under the github.com/mediachain
  organization. This profile was surfaced as an a16z portfolio company and enriched from its surviving open-source surface.
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/media-chain/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
x-type: company
x-source: vc-portfolio
x-status: acquired
x-status-note: Acqui-hired by Spotify in April 2017; project archived/defunct.
x-backed-by:
- a16z
- Union Square Ventures
x-tier: stub
x-tier-reason: portfolio-lead
specificationVersion: '0.20'
created: '2026-07-17'
modified: '2026-07-20'
tags:
- Company
- Media
- Metadata
- Blockchain
- Decentralized
- IPFS
- Attribution
- Music
apis: []
common:
- type: GitHubOrganization
  url: https://github.com/mediachain
- type: Documentation
  url: https://github.com/mediachain/mediachain-docs
- type: SourceCode
  url: https://github.com/mediachain/mediachain
- type: Packages
  url: packages/media-chain-packages.yml
- type: SDKs
  url: packages/media-chain-packages.yml
- type: CLI
  url: cli/media-chain-cli.yml
- type: Protobuf
  name: Types
  url: grpc/media-chain-types.proto
- type: Protobuf
  name: Datastore
  url: grpc/media-chain-datastore.proto
- type: Protobuf
  name: Transactor
  url: grpc/media-chain-transactor.proto
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com
- FN: APIs.json
  email: info@apis.io
x-enrichment:
  date: '2026-07-20'
  status: enriched
  artifacts_added: 5
  pass: local-v1