Recommended for collection: The most popular and practical cryptocurrency data analysis tools
These 10 data analysis tools are worth keeping.This article is organized and supplemented by ChainNews based on the tweets and published reports of Messari analyst Jack Purdy.
Living in the world of cryptocurrency, what is most abundant is data, and what is most lacking is also data.
This sounds like a paradox, but think of it this way: the public nature of blockchain means that on-chain data is readily available, such as:
• You definitely want to know how many Bitcoin transactions over $100,000 there are besides mainstream stablecoins?
• You definitely want to know what the liquidation price is for each ETH collateral loan on mainstream lending platforms?
In fact, the answers to these questions are all in on-chain data, but answering them is not easy. The answers to other similar questions are the same; they are hidden among thousands of nodes worldwide. Therefore, the only way to get the answers is to know how to correctly find the relevant information.
Without the right tools, digging through this publicly available, readily accessible crypto data is undoubtedly like finding a needle in a haystack.
In traditional finance, analysts or other professionals can use market data analysis tools like Bloomberg Terminal, S&P Cap IQ, Factset, etc., to obtain and analyze this data. After decades of market refinement, these tools have permeated every aspect of the financial industry, providing professionals with various analytical methods and helping them make the most accurate investment judgments.
However, in the cryptocurrency industry, obtaining professional data analysis tools is not easy. Some crypto data and analysis providers are less professional startups that can only rely on continuously learning new methods to meet user demands. It can be said that many of the best analytical tools have only emerged in the last few months, so industry participants may not have a deep understanding of how to use these products. As these companies continue to carve out their niche markets, it becomes increasingly important for professionals to understand relevant crypto data tools and how to use them to meet their needs.
Now, let’s take a look at which tools can provide the best support and assistance for cryptocurrency investors, especially in the DeFi field.
Dune Analytics
Without a doubt, Dune Analytics is the most commonly used analysis website for cryptocurrency analysts to date. It offers many pre-processed data analysis dashboards that showcase a wealth of key metrics needed to assess the health of the industry.
ChainNews recently reported that Dune Analytics completed a $2 million seed round of financing led by blockchain investment fund Dragonfly Capital at the end of September, with participation from other top venture capital firms such as Multicoin Capital, Hashed, Semantic Ventures, Digital Currency Group, Coinbase Ventures, Alameda Research, and many angel investors including CoinGecko and Aave founder Stani Kulechov.
Each part of the Dune Analytics dashboard allows you to grasp the latest trends in the cryptocurrency industry, such as DEX metrics, from which you can understand the future development trends of the crypto industry. Additionally, Dune Analytics has many dashboards for specific projects to help users conduct deeper analysis. For example, projects like Maker, Compound, and 0x all have dedicated dashboards.
Decentralized exchange performance:
https://explore.duneanalytics.com/dashboard/dex-metrics
MakerDAO dashboard:
https://explore.duneanalytics.com/dashboard/maker-dao---mcd
0x dashboard:
https://explore.duneanalytics.com/dashboard/0x-trading-activity
If you can’t find what you need on Dune Analytics, don’t worry. You are not limited to the default dashboards provided; as long as you have a little knowledge of SQL database language, you can directly query the entire Ethereum blockchain data and explore more data analysis possibilities.
Of course, mastering SQL database language is not an easy task, and for a cryptocurrency industry analyst with no programming experience, it may take several weeks to learn.
If you manage to get the hang of it, then you can access almost all on-chain data.
The following image is an example of a tool created by Messari, which tracks the supply information of the Bitcoin-pegged token WBTC in the DeFi space.
Dune Analytics even offers many query services for niche market data. For example, you can analyze the buying and selling transactions of holders during the HEGIC token sale, thereby inferring potential market behavior of investors.
Dune Analytics is actually a very open platform and has a large and continuously growing community. As more and more analysts use Dune Analytics to create analytical charts and dashboards, the network effect will gradually emerge, making the rich collection of cryptocurrency data more valuable to other users, thereby attracting more people to use the platform.
Nansen
Nansen can almost be considered an on-chain analysis tool that any DeFi practitioner needs to use. It is somewhat similar to Dune Analytics, also providing data analysis through dashboards, but Nansen covers a broader range of crypto fields and specific projects (though the selection range is not as large as one might think).
Nansen's biggest advantage is that it provides analysts with a multifunctional tracking tool, which they have named " Token God Mode." This name is not an exaggeration, as analysts using this tool can almost comprehensively understand the behavior of all ERC-20 tokens, including:
- Historical supply of centralized exchange tokens;
- Historical supply of decentralized exchange tokens;
- Unique address count;
- Account balances of the largest token holders.
……
For anyone looking to conduct proper due diligence on a cryptocurrency token and fully grasp the relevant information, the information provided by Nansen can give you a comprehensive understanding of token market trends and where and how large-scale sales are occurring.
Another highly versatile tool launched by Nansen is the "Wallet Profiler," which allows analysts to view the behavior of any wallet address.
It is worth mentioning that using Nansen's tools may give you a sense of peering into the portfolios of Warren Buffett and Ray Dalio (founder of Bridgewater Associates). You no longer need to refresh Twitter news daily to understand industry dynamics, as you can now know the movements of key projects in the cryptocurrency market on your own.
Token Terminal
In the new wave of DeFi token frenzy, the role of tokens seems increasingly akin to equity on their respective networks. Therefore, cryptocurrency market participants may seek to adopt some traditionally validated methods when analyzing these tokens. One traditional analysis method is to look at the " revenue" generated by DeFi protocols—of course, while there is controversy over the definition of "DeFi revenue" in the market, it is generally recognized as the total fees paid (regardless of whether these fees are paid to liquidity providers or token holders).
On the other hand, the "DeFi revenue" metric indeed provides a measure of the total economic activity flowing through the relevant protocols, allowing people to understand how much value token holders might receive.
Token Terminal is very distinctive in providing revenue data for DeFi protocols.
If we delve deeper into the Token Terminal tool, we find that it can also create relative assessment metrics based on "DeFi revenue" data, such as benchmarking "DeFi revenue" against token market capitalization.
However, given the variability and unpredictability of the DeFi industry, it is still too early to use Token Terminal directly for investment decisions. Nevertheless, this tool can still help DeFi users make general comparisons of the " protocol revenue" metric.
DeFi Pulse
In the English-speaking world, the total locked value metric of DeFi Pulse has become a " barometer" for assessing the scale of the industry. This metric is derived from aggregating the value of all DeFi locked collateral. Given the variety of DeFi collateral types available, some nuances need to be considered when looking at the total locked value metric. However, regardless, this metric has become a standard in the DeFi industry and helps assess user confidence in the security and potential profitability of DeFi protocols.
Etherscan
Etherscan is a well-established Ethereum block explorer and one of the most widely used block explorers in the market. It provides users, researchers, and developers with various functions, some of which include:
• Viewing the current on-chain transaction status;
• Viewing related historical transactions;
• Viewing information about the top holders of a particular token;
• Viewing how much can be earned through on-chain arbitrage;
• Viewing how complex hacking attacks are executed;
• Highlighting the gas fees you must pay;
• Displaying all gas fees consumed by DApps.
Etherscan also provides many other data metric analysis functions related to Ethereum, which can be viewed via this link.
CoinMetrics
If we do not analyze DeFi data, CoinMetrics should be considered a good blockchain analysis tool and is currently one of the best institutional-grade data providers. Its services cover almost all mainstream blockchains in the market, providing on-chain information, token prices, token quantities, mining data, and supply data points, all of which can be visually compared in easy-to-use chart tools.
Glassnode
Another multifunctional crypto data provider is Glassnode, whose tools can also display a variety of charts and dashboards.
For example, you can view the holding status and whale movements chart on Glassnode (this chart can show information about whales holding 1000+ BTC). By collecting market behavior information from these long-term holders, you can gain a deeper understanding of the market.
Additionally, you can obtain some important but often overlooked metrics to compare blockchains, such as the proportion of revenue from fees in miner income (which is somewhat like the network's security expenditure).
IntotheBlock
IntotheBlock is an on-chain market analysis tool that provides effective supplements for users' due diligence on crypto projects through some unique charts, such as inflows and outflows of funds, trading order book market depth, etc.
Skew
Skew's " Analytics" tool has done something that many have tried to do but failed—analyzing crypto derivatives data. This tool provides analysis charts for Bitcoin futures/options and Ethereum futures/options, covering almost all data points users need.
Skew focuses on institutional clients, offering analysis services that provide real-time overviews of the cryptocurrency derivatives market, including over 100 crypto futures and options charts. Many of its tools, launched or soon to be launched, have a Bloomberg Terminal style. The skewTrading platform will initially focus on over-the-counter (OTC) execution of Bitcoin options and futures contracts offered by the CME.
Skew was founded in September 2018 by Emmanuel Goh and Tim Noat, who previously served as equity derivatives traders at JPMorgan Chase and Citibank.
Given the growing popularity of cryptocurrency derivatives, using Skew to analyze the structure of the cryptocurrency market is particularly useful. Especially during the " Black Thursday" on March 12 of this year, the Skew analysis tool has proven to withstand market stress tests.
Headquartered in London, Skew has rapidly grown in prominence due to the expansion of the cryptocurrency derivatives trading market. ChainNews reported that Skew raised $2 million in seed funding last September, led by FirstMinute Capital, with participation from Seedcamp, Kima Ventures, QCP Capital, and Kleiner Perkins. The company completed another $5 million financing in the first half of this year, during which it announced the launch of a trading execution platform, with this round of financing led by Octopus Ventures, a London-based venture capital fund with a size of £1.2 billion.
Messari
The core screening tool provided by Messari allows users to understand short-term and long-term token price trends while compiling various portfolios to track the status of some market-leading cryptocurrency funds.
Messari's charting tool can track various metric data from the beginning of the year to date, such as:
- Bitcoin vs. traditional assets' market performance;
- Inflation rate over the past year;
- The actual trading volume of some of the largest stablecoins by market capitalization.
Messari also provides a useful crypto data tool: liquid supply curves, which users can find on the respective asset pages.
On the other hand, one of the most difficult to understand but most important evaluation factors before making investment decisions is the inflation rate of token supply. Messari works closely with token projects and combines disclosed registration information to understand the most accurate token release schedule, informing users when the market might face selling pressure. The token circulation information provided by Messari is relatively accurate.
ChainNews Editor's Choice: DeBank
After organizing the most useful cryptocurrency analysis data tools recommended by Messari analyst Jack Purdy based on his tweets and published articles, ChainNews editors found that he overlooked a team from China. It must be said that in terms of data sharing for DeFi products, the Chinese team DeBank rightfully deserves to be included as the " most practical and comprehensive DeFi data tool." This is also the DeFi data analysis tool that ChainNews's editorial team likes the most.
Similar to DeFi Pulse, DeBank can provide data such as the locked value of various DeFi protocols and rank them accordingly. However, compared to DeFi Pulse, DeBank is more detailed in analyzing the smart contracts of each protocol. From our usage experience, the data presented by DeBank is more accurate.
In addition, due to the rapid pace of innovation in DeFi products, DeBank acts quickly in providing data on newly emerging DeFi products.
It is particularly noteworthy that DeBank has launched the "real locked value" data for DeFi—this is the locked value data excluding endogenous assets within the DeFi ecosystem. The general Ethereum DeFi ecosystem often refers to total locked value (TVL) data as the most important metric. However, due to the issue of duplicate calculations caused by some assets being re-collateralized, DeBank's real locked value data excludes these " endogenous assets" or " derivative tokens" (such as LP Tokens, cTokens, yTokens) and only counts real assets like ETH, USDC, USDT, and platform tokens. This data is more valuable for reference.
Additionally, DeBank provides a price comparison trading function for decentralized trading platforms, helping users find the best quotes and complete on-chain transactions among numerous DEXs.
This product not only compares prices among AMMs like Uniswap but also integrates support for order book DEXs like dYdX and DDEX, as well as aggregator DEXs like 1inch and Paraswap, providing gas fee comparisons to help users find the truly optimal on-chain trading path among nearly 20 DEXs. Users can also check the actual trade slippage after the transaction is completed through the slippage monitoring function.
Conclusion
Well, these are the cryptocurrency data tools that I hope to recommend for cryptocurrency analysts. The speed of change in the cryptocurrency industry is rapid, and for those who wish to analyze seriously, these ten cryptocurrency data tools are indispensable.
As the cryptocurrency industry continues to develop, the number and scale of funds, service providers, and organizations using data analysis tools will also grow. To meet the expanding user demand, the functions provided by these analysis tools will inevitably become more mature, and perhaps one day they will become as ubiquitous in the market as the " Bloomberg Terminal."
