With the infinite growing number of cryptos and protocols, DeFi portfolio dashboards are becoming more and more essential. Just the fact that when we put a token in a smart contract, the token is no longer on our DeFi address, is a huge pain to track for the user. Without any DeFi dashboards, the user needs to go manually to each platform he uses to track and manage his crypto assets.
As the need is obvious, many dashboards have naturally launched on the market and compete with each other. How are dashboards evolving? What focus are they taking?
We’ll try to answer those questions in this article. Note that we are only focusing on DeFi portfolio dashboards and not DeFi market dashboards like DeFi Llama or custody/CeFi trackers like Coinstats. Throughout this article, we’ll focus on tools like Debank, Zapper, Zerion, Apeboard, , yieldwatch, Instadapp, sonarwatch, optical.finance,…
You’ve probably noticed some changes in your favorite DeFi dashboard.
For example, I used to swap directly on DeBank but that feature suddenly disappeared. I also used to be able to lend directly from Zapper, and that feature also disappeared. Some dashboards are pivoting into particular verticals, others are jumping on all the current trends.
We’ve seen significant shifts in DeFi dashboard, let’s break everything down.
Portfolio tracking & management
At the very beginning, the idea was really to do this all-in-one place to do everything. Projects wanted to merge the tracking part and the management part in a single interface. For example, Zapper was born from the merger of Defisnap (dashboard) and Defizap (one-click investment).
Swap
The most basic management feature would be the swap feature.
At the time, portfolio dashboards only allowed a few tokens to be bought and sold because there were no things such as pool aggregation.
In march 2019, Zerion was proposing to buy and sell around 20 tokens.
Now it can trade hundreds of tokens across a huge number of pools with the most optimized path. Many trading solutions are already top-notch, we can cite 1inch or paraswap.
However, some dashboards just chose to remove it like Debank which has put the swap feature directly in their browser wallet.
Protocol tracking
For the common crypto investor, one of the most needed features is protocol tracking and protocol investment.
Zerion is now building a trustless bank to unify the space of Decentralized Finance to foster usability and adoption of DeFi. We believe that the true value of open-source finance comes from the interoperability of these protocols. Therefore, we are looking for novel applications, use cases, or better implementations of DeFi protocols for future integration within Zerion. — Zerion.io
Right now, we can see a race to whom has the most tracked protocols.
Here is the current status (October 2022):
- Apeboard: 472 supported protocols
- Debank: 1488 supported protocols
- Zapper: 464 supported protocols
- Zerion: a mix between Coingecko’s API, Zerion’s DeFi SDK, Debank’s Open API, and a variety of on-chain sources directly from DEXes
Here, Zerion seems to be the winner.
We’ll see below how projects are scaling that protocol tracking.
Integration
For the race to whom has the most tracked protocols, each team was manually adding each protocol by hand.
But to keep up with the growing number of protocols, teams needed to find a way to scale. Some projects were doing integrations themselves but others chose to let anyone participate in new protocol integrations by proposing SDKs. Zerion proposed their DeFi SDK in May 2020:
Here is how it works:
So, you have a new protocol that you think DeFi users will love — now what? Just follow these simple steps:
Check out our open-source examples of Adapters here.
Create your own adapter smart contract, deploy it on the Ethereum mainnet and verify it on Etherscan. (If you have any problems, reach out to us on Discord and we will be more than happy to help you!)
Once the adapter is complete, open a pull request on Github, we will need to review it and add it to the Zerion AdapterRegistry. Check out Github for more info on this.
Once this process is complete, your protocol will be almost instantly visible to the users of Zerion and other dApps that use DeFi SDK. — Zerion.io
Zapper also recently proposed Zapper Studio in April 2022 with the same idea.
Letting anyone integrate has many benefits:
- It helps to scale and keep up with the DeFi ecosystem
- It involves the community/developers in the development of the product
- It helps protocols (especially small ones) to be featured on major dashboards
Protocol investment
Protocol tracking is growing fast but I wouldn’t say that it’s the same for protocol investing.
At the time, it was the main focus:
Zapper now supports 18 protocols and counting, constantly looking to expand the ways in which they can be plugged into one another. From adding liquidity to Uniswap and Balancer pools to farming YAMs and just about everything in between, Zapper has become the one-stop-shop for farming DeFi’s most attractive yields. — Zapper.fi
We could invest in lending protocols, liquidity pools, vaults,…
But now, we can’t invest anymore in Zapper. One reason maybe is that they suffered exploits in the past related to their investment features like this one. Maybe they shifted from the investment part. Maybe it’s coming back later… Who knows?
Other DeFi dashboards also maybe just don’t want to take the risk to propose protocol investments.
On the other hand, Zerion is proposing a new and interesting way to invest in a protocol. You can directly trade interest-bearing tokens (atoken, ctoken, LP token,…). It opens up many possibilities and simplifies complex investment operations.
Smart contract accounts
We have also seen a new way of managing assets with tools like Argent or Instadapp. Using a smart contract account is a new way of managing your DeFi assets. A smart contract acts like your wallet account and you can control it with your DeFi address. It is trustless and you can manage, delegate and optimize your assets with the same account.
It allows you to create several accounts from one DeFi address. Traditionally, you would have to create several DeFi addresses with a new private key each time. With smart contract accounts, for example, you can create an account for leverage, interest, or voting directly governed by a unique DeFi address.
You can also delegate to people certain permission on your account. It can be very useful if you want someone else to vote for you, optimize returns, or act as a backup.
Argent and Instadapp are two projects that are using Smart contract accounts.
Here is an article from Instadapp about it.
Explore
We have seen that dashboards were a bit shy about proposing protocol investments. But it’s a whole new game when it comes to exploring and seeking new investment opportunities.
As DeFi was growing faster than ever during the summer of 2020, DeFi dashboards started to propose an Explore page to help users find new opportunities amongst protocols depending on different criteria like TVL, Volume, investors, token price,…. It is about being able to show protocols that are interesting and reliable. Too many users get into rug pulls and projects want to prevent that. Some examples: Zerion, Zapper, Debank, Apeboard.
Multichain experience
Because Ethereum was leading and all the sidechains and L2s didn’t exist at the time, dashboards were focusing on Ethereum (and Bitcoin). Ethereum had most of the liquidity and use cases thanks to the EVM.
Then came out new blockchains, sidechains, and L2s such as BSC, Solana, Polygon, Cardano, Avalanche,… New applications and protocols rapidly came along and to keep up, dashboards needed to go multichain. That meant adding asset tracking, protocol tracking, protocol investment, swap, bridge,… for new blockchain ecosystems.
- Most dashboards are focusing on EVM blockchains like Zapper or Debank. Some focus on particular chains like sonar.watch for Solana or Yieldwatch for BSC.
- Some are integrating non-EVM blockchains like Apeboard that proposes Solana, Ronin, Cosmos, Elrond, Cardano, Near,… Zerion also proposes Solana in addition to traditional EVM blockchains.
- Finally, some are even trying to integrate Centralized exchanges: amongst DeFi dashboards, Apeboard is the only one to allow Binance tracking.
Regarding multichain bridges, projects were doing their own bridges at the beginning but rapidly they started to integrate leading multichain bridge projects like socket.tech, LiFi protocol, hop protocol, or anyswap.
For example, Zapper had its own bridge solution between Ethereum, L2, and sidechains but had a vulnerability. A year later, they are now using socket.tech. Zerion is also using socket.tech by the way.
Generally, for all the multichain features, projects are now using third-party solutions rather than their in-house solution.
Social features
One of the most obvious trends is social features.
All the leading DeFi dashboards are jumping on it.
- Leaderboards give people a score they can grow and allow them to watch other addresses’ scores: https://debank.com/ranking. NFT profile pictures let users show off what they have/like.
- Feed sections that are still experimental allow them to easily get updated on recent address transactions. That feature was introduced by Debank, and Zapper is currently working on it:
- As DAO tracking and analysis are getting more and more widespread, we will probably see in-app voting soon.
- For the next social features, there are upcoming messaging solutions. Debank recently introduced its whitepaper for it.
Gamification
To engage with their community, leading dashboards are gamifying their experience.
Zapper started first by incentivizing its users with quests to access NFT mintings. Quests consisted in using management features on the platform such as swap, lending,… It was quite a success since it generated more than 1000 ETH volumes across 2 NFT seasons.
Recently, Zerion is kind of doing the same incentivizing but with ‘living’ NFTs. Each user can get an NFT that can evolve depending on criteria like transaction fee amount, number of transactions, number of tokens,…
Mobile App
In the idea to make DeFi mainstream, being mobile-first is a game changer. Mobiles are for everybody, it is a social, payment, gaming, and information tool at the same time. It unlocks a new range of users and use cases. And leading dashboards now all have their mobile version.
We built the first DeFi-native app on Android and iOS. The average investor opens the Zerion app 9 times a day and we’ve seen $110M+ traded on mobile since launch. — Zerion.io
According to Zerion’s quote, their mobile app is frequently used and generated a significant volume.
API focus
After building giant infrastructures, the logical next step is to open it for businesses, dapps, users,… so projects can scale and monetize it.
Zerion and Instadapp propose an SDK so any dapp can easily integrate protocols.
Debank is allowing projects to track around 1500 protocols with its Open API. Zerion adapters and Zapper Studio let any protocol directly push their integration to their public repository to get integrated.
Those tools are helping the DeFi ecosystem to have clean data and easy in-app protocol integration.
Conclusion
Portfolio management platforms are becoming more and more complete in terms of features. From exploring DeFi to crypto massaging, leading DeFi dashboards are experimenting with all kinds of things to try to become a must-have app.
Excited to see the next trend… 👀
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