From the outside looking in, API3 can be thought of as a collaborative project meant to deliver a host of API services to smart contract platforms in a manner that is not only rooted in transparency (i.e. it is decentralized) but also requires a minimal level of trust between its participants.
To elaborate, the project is governed by a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) — aka API3 DAO — ensuring that all of its coding data is available to devs in an open-source format all while maintaining a high level of operational transparency.