Dune Digest 48
EHTBerlin + the Dune API
GM
Welcome to Dune Digest #48.
Last weekend, over 100 hackers at ETHBerlin got access to our newly launched API.
The prizes: €1000 and limited edition swag 🧢
We were blown away by the quality of submissions. In today’s issue, we’re going to talk through the 5 winners - and (perhaps) get a glimpse of the future of crypto analytics, built on the Dune API.
Here we go…
#1 Moonblock
There’s a meme in the web2 world that every marketplace startup is just a feature from Craigslist.
If our experience ETHBerlin is anything to go by, we might be seeing a similar narrative play out with Dune dashboards.
A few weeks ago, wizard 🧙 @kingjames23 built a dashboard on NFT performance for large brands (think: Nike, D&G, Tiffany). It went viral on Twitter, and shortly afterwards @nlevine19 was hired by Nike (congrats!).
Enter Moonblock. Think of Moonblock as that dashboard, unbundled into a full blown market intelligence platform1 - designed specifically to enable big brands to plan their market entry strategy into NFTs.
Arriving at ETHBerlin, they’d already built an MVP, powered by their proprietary database of brand NFTs. But they lacked a reliable source of up to date, on-chain statistics like transaction volume or royalties. Until of course, they discovered the Dune API.
Fast forward 48 hours … they had us with the hilarious submission video, but we’re pumped to see how they take this forward.
Market intelligence tools - like Ahrefs, SparkToro or Similarweb - are a staple of web2. No doubt we’ll see the same dynamic play out in web3.
For more info - check out their website + Twitter.
#2 DuneSheets
Ah yes, spreadsheets - the biggest competitor for any b2b startup.
Well sometimes, if you can’t beat them, join them! That’s why we loved submission from @NealSwaelens + Nicky Vandevoorde.
DuneSheets does exactly what it says: it enables you to query Dune data in Google Sheets, using custom functions like `DUNESHEETS_LATEST_PRICE(ETH)`.
Spreadsheets are the proven way to work with numbers on computers. To put it in perspective - there are an estimated 750m monthly active users for spreadsheets, 100x more than for SQL.
While we love SQL at Dune, it’s difficult to argue with those statistics. No-code/low-code tools are an important part of making crypto data accessible, and we’re excited to support these use cases with our API.
Want to give DuneSheets a try? Sign up for updates here! 🚀
#3 Tornadoxxed
Dune heavyweights @hildobby_, @sui414 and @ktl_xv partnered up to deliver this impressive data transparency tool.
The problem: in a post Tornado Cash sanction world, it’s important to know what interaction each of us has had with the protocol, and if so, how anonymous our transactions really were.
How does Tornadoxxed help? By dropping in your ENS name or wallet address, you can find out:
Deposits + withdrawals for Tornado Cash over 6 L1/L2s
Whether your usage of the protocol may have leaked privacy information (e.g. if the same wallet deposits and withdraws consistently over time)
The best part - they contributed a spell for ENS name <> address lookup, so future wizards can build on their work. 🪄
The statistical methods they used would be hard/impossible to express in SQL. With the Dune API, we’re opening up a world of new insights with machine learning, network analysis and more.
#4 POOF
POOF = Privacy-oriented on-chain and off-chain analytics. Let’s break that down.
Analytics tools are the workhorse of the web2 world. Products like Amplitude, Mixpanel + Heap enable developers to understand digital user journeys, e.g. looking at funnels or flows.
Typically, they work by combining behavior events (e.g. clicked this button) with transactional events (e.g. completed a purchase).
How does that look in web3? That’s the problem POOF is solving, and their submission differs from web2 in two key ways:
Privacy oriented - the user has control over what data they submit, and when
Transactional information is now stored on-chain, rather than in a company database - and fetched via the Dune API
Analytics gets a bad rap, but it’s an essential part of how developers improve user experiences. We love the balance of privacy and useful data collection here - excited to see how it develops!
Take a look at the submission by @Ferossgp and @nastyarodionova.
#5 Dune Discord bot
The data must flow … into Discord!
The concept of ChatOps - widely credited to Github, and most frequently seen in the context of bots on Slack or Discord - is the idea of blending human chat with automated commands, triggered by text.
If I’m talking to my fellow degen on Discord, and we need to fetch the latest BAYC floor price - ideally, that should happen without breaking the flow of conversation.
Enter Dune Discord bot - by Arpi, Benno and Lorenz. Just type `!Dune`, the query id and visualization type - to get the answer in the same thread.
At the moment you’d need to remember the query id, but you could imagine a future where you write pseudo code like `!Dune nft bayc floor`, or even use AI to automatically generate the SQL (and yes, we had hackers working on that too!).
Data is only useful if it’s available when you need it. Tools like Dune Discord bot should make that easier.
GN
TLDR: If you hadn’t noticed, we’re pretty excited about this!
With the API, we’re ready to support a new generation of crypto analytics tools 🏗️
Market intelligence, no-code, web analytics, bots… the sky is the limit.
Interested? Reach out to api@dune.com.
See you again next week! When we really will be back to our regular program of data, dashboards & wizardry.
The data must flow!
Only conceptually - the Moonblock team came up with this all independently.
Awesome projects and congratulations to all the winners!