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The Web3 Developer Link Stack We Actually Bookmark

A practical Cryptonly bookmark list for developers and product owners building crypto payments, wallets, smart contracts, and on-chain products.

8 min read

Cryptonly team

Cryptonly team

Product

Why this list exists

This is an educational resource, not financial, legal, or security advice. Always verify tooling, pricing, limits, and compliance requirements before you put anything in production.

This list began as a messy Cryptonly bookmark folder: RPC providers we compare, docs we send to new engineers, faucets we forget until testnet day, wallets we test, compliance tools we keep an eye on, and explorers we open when something looks odd.

It is not meant to be a "top 100 crypto tools" SEO dump. It is a practical starting stack for developers and product owners building with crypto payments, wallets, smart contracts, or on-chain data.

Some links are tools we use, some are tools we are evaluating, and some are simply useful defaults when you need to orient yourself quickly.

How to use this list

Do not try to adopt everything here. Start with the category that blocks your next product decision.

  • Need balances, transactions, or contract reads? Start with node providers and explorers.
  • Need to launch a checkout, wallet flow, or dApp? Read the SDK and wallet sections.
  • Touching customer funds? Look at compliance and security before you ship.
  • Testing a prototype? Grab faucets, use a testnet, and keep mainnet keys far away from experiments.

Our bias is simple: prefer boring infrastructure for production and fun tools for prototypes.

1. Blockchain node providers

Most teams should not run their own blockchain infrastructure on day one. A managed RPC provider lets you read balances, submit transactions, listen for events, and build product flows without babysitting nodes.

Multi-chain and EVM

  • Alchemy - A strong default for EVM teams, especially if you want dashboards, enhanced APIs, and good developer docs.
  • Infura - Still one of the standard Ethereum/IPFS choices. Useful when you want something established and widely documented.
  • QuickNode - Good multi-chain coverage, including Bitcoin and Solana, with add-ons when a plain RPC endpoint is not enough.
  • Chainstack - Worth comparing if you care about cloud/provider flexibility and predictable infrastructure setup.
  • GetBlock - Broad chain support with shared and dedicated node options.
  • ANKR - Useful when you want a decentralized RPC angle or broad EVM coverage.

Bitcoin and Lightning

  • QuickNode Bitcoin - Bitcoin RPC with archival options.
  • BlockCypher - Bitcoin, Litecoin, Doge, and a simple REST API.
  • Mempool.space API - Great for fee estimation, mempool data, and transaction inspection.
  • LND - The serious route if you need to run your own Lightning node.
  • Voltage - Managed Lightning nodes when you want to avoid the operational burden early.

Tron

  • TronGrid - Official Tron node provider. We are evaluating it because Tron is still hard to ignore for stablecoin payment flows.

RPC providers look interchangeable until you depend on them for payment status. Test rate limits, latency, retries, and historical data access before the provider becomes part of your checkout flow.

2. AML, KYT, KYC, and compliance services

If your product touches customer funds, compliance is not optional. The right setup depends on your jurisdiction, asset support, risk appetite, and whether you need wallet screening, transaction monitoring, sanctions checks, or full onboarding.

  • Chainalysis - Enterprise-grade KYT, investigations, and risk tooling. Often the name larger teams start with.
  • OnChainRisk - Interesting for smaller projects that still need API-based wallet or transaction risk checks.
  • CipherTrace - Focuses on VASP risk, traveler rule workflows, and institutional compliance needs.
  • Scorechain - EU-based platform with screening and analytics across major assets.
  • Sanction Scanner - Useful if you need sanctions, PEP, and onboarding checks alongside crypto-specific tooling.
  • Coinfirm - Broad asset coverage, including Bitcoin, Tron, and DeFi-related risk signals.

Do not choose a compliance provider from a pricing page alone. Ask what chains they support, how they score stablecoin transfers, what evidence you can export, and how false positives are handled.

3. Developer documentation and SDKs

Good docs save more time than clever abstractions. These are the references we would rather have open before guessing from an old Stack Overflow answer.

Ethereum and EVM

  • Ethereum.org Developers Portal - The canonical starting point.
  • Ethers.js - The long-running JavaScript library many EVM projects still rely on.
  • Web3.js - Older, still common, and useful when maintaining existing integrations.
  • Viem - A modern TypeScript-first interface that is pleasant for new EVM codebases.
  • Solidity Documentation - Smart contract language reference.

Bitcoin

Tron, Solana, and others

4. Testnet faucets

Faucets are boring until you need them five minutes before a demo. Keep a few options bookmarked because limits, outages, and account requirements change often.

Small habit that helps: write down which testnet, asset, and faucet you used in the issue or pull request. Future you will thank past you when a test address looks unfamiliar.

5. Smart contract development frameworks

If you are writing contracts, your framework should make testing and deployment repeatable. If it only helps you compile, it is not doing enough.

  • Hardhat - Most popular EVM environment, with a large plugin ecosystem.
  • Foundry - Fast, Solidity-native, and great for test-heavy workflows. We use it for some internal contract testing.
  • Remix IDE - Browser-based and useful for quick prototyping.
  • Anchor - Solana's framework if you are outside EVM.
  • TronBox - Tron development and testing.

6. Block explorers and analytics

Explorers are your first debugging UI. When a payment, transfer, contract call, or balance looks wrong, this is where you check whether the chain agrees with your backend.

  • Etherscan - Essential for Ethereum.
  • PolygonScan and BscScan - Chain-specific EVM explorers.
  • Blockscout - Open-source explorer for many EVM chains.
  • Mempool.space - Real-time Bitcoin explorer with a clean mempool view.
  • Blockchair - Universal blockchain explorer covering Bitcoin, Litecoin, and more.
  • Tronscan - Official Tron explorer.
  • Dune Analytics - Community dashboards and SQL-based analysis, mostly around EVM ecosystems.
  • Zapper and Zerion - Human-readable portfolio and wallet views.
  • Nansen - Wallet labels and analytics, especially useful for EVM research.

7. Wallet and identity infrastructure

Wallet connection is not just a button. It affects onboarding, support, recovery, fraud handling, and whether non-crypto-native users can complete the flow.

EVM

  • WalletConnect - Universal bridge for mobile wallets.
  • RainbowKit - Polished React wallet connection UI.
  • Privy - Embedded wallets and auth.
  • Magic - Passwordless login with auto-created wallet flows.

Bitcoin and Tron

  • Leather - Bitcoin wallet for Stacks and plain BTC.
  • UniSat - Popular for BRC-20 and Ordinals, with API support.
  • Xverse - Bitcoin wallet with Stacks and BNS support.
  • TronLink - Official browser extension and mobile wallet for Tron.
  • TronWeb wallet integration - Docs for connecting Tron dApps.

8. Security and auditing tools

Security tooling is not a substitute for review, but it catches mistakes humans miss and forces teams to write down assumptions.

  • OpenZeppelin Contracts - Standard-compliant EVM contract libraries.
  • Slither - Static analysis for Solidity.
  • Echidna - Fuzzing for EVM smart contracts.
  • Tenderly - Debugging, monitoring, and simulation for EVM.
  • Immunefi - Bug bounty platform for major crypto ecosystems.
  • Minsc - Useful for visualizing Bitcoin script behavior.
  • TronEye - Basic Tron contract verification.

If a contract can move funds, it deserves tests, review, monitoring, and a rollback or pause story. Tools help, but process matters more.

9. Price oracles and data feeds

Any product that prices assets, triggers contract logic, or calculates payment amounts from market data needs to be careful about where that data comes from.

  • Chainlink Data Feeds - Industry standard, available on many EVM chains.
  • Pyth Network - High-frequency financial data, popular on Solana, Sui, and EVM.
  • RedStone - Modular oracles with gas-efficient designs.
  • API3 - First-party oracles governed by a DAO.

For Bitcoin and Tron, native oracle options are more limited. You will likely use bridging services, multi-chain oracle networks, or backend-side pricing depending on the product.

Bonus: on-chain development kits for non-EVM ecosystems

Not every crypto product is EVM-first. If your users or assets live elsewhere, start with the native ecosystem instead of forcing an Ethereum mental model onto every chain.

Keep this list fresh

That is the toolbox we would hand to a developer or product owner who needs to get productive quickly. It will not cover every niche, but it covers the parts that usually show up first: infrastructure, docs, testnets, wallets, explorers, compliance, security, and data feeds.

This blog post is a snapshot. The living, community-updated version lives on GitHub: github.com/cryptonly-lib/web3-handbook.

  • Star it to save it forever.
  • Fork it to tweak it for your stack.
  • Open an issue or pull request if you have a tool to add or a link that broke.

We will keep the GitHub version updated as we discover new tools, retire old ones, and hear from developers building real things. If a link saved you time, tell us. If one became stale, open an issue. That is how this list stays useful.

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