Reference → dAPIsID and Name Schemes
An Airnode places the value of a data feed on-chain into a beacon. Therefore beacons are the on-chain persistent state of a data feed value.
What is the difference between a dAPI name and a beacon or beacon set ID? dAPI names are the principle means used to get API provider data held by beacons. Any one beacon, identified by an ID, has a single value. A dAPI may in fact get values from several beacons and average the values, and/or apply other logic, before returning a single value to the reader.
dAPIs can be fluid because they use a publicly known set of beacons to source values from. The list of beacons could be altered for best-in-time results (e.g. beacon availability) without a dApp owner needing to change the code of its smart contract. Beacons could come and go but dAPIs are durable. Because of this flexibility it is always best to use a dAPI, identified by its name, rather than beacon IDs which are fixed.
- dAPI name: A human readable name that represents a beacon or beacon set. The name is assigned when the dAPI is created and never changes.
- Beacon ID: The hash of a beacon's parameters.
- Beacon set ID: The hash of the beacon IDs in the beacon set.