Analyse blockchain data with Dune analytics — Getting Started

How to analyse blockchain data with Dune Analytics — Getting started

Anyone can access public blockchain data because it is not owned by any centralized entity. As the ecosystem expands, the blockchain will store an infinite amount of valuable information.

When combined with data analytics and machine learning, the insights gleaned from such open data would be extremely valuable.

Despite the fact that blockchain contains a wealth of useful information, it is not designed to handle analytical queries; rather, it is intended to provide security, immutability, and transparency.

Many data providers are attempting to make blockchain data more accessible for analysts, researchers, and scientists.

Dune Analytics is a fantastic way to explore web3 data using SQL while also becoming a part of an amazing community of wizards.

Dune decodes raw blockchain data and loads it into a SQL database. Analysts can then focus on creating meaningful insights rather than spending time to parse raw data.

Dune enables analysts to easily query blockchain data using SQL.

Who makes use of Dune Analytics?

• Top protocols utilize on chain analytics to better understand what is going on in their ecosystem.
• Research and development firms, analytics startups that create industry-specific data intelligence and reports.
• Individuals or investors seeking greater visibility in order to make more informed decisions.

Below is an example of Uniswap’s analytics requests in which anyone can help answer key questions by creating insightful dashboards.

Analytics bounty from Uniswap (Content source : Uniswap)

What skills does one need to acquire?

• Basic SQL skills to retrieve and transform data into the desired format.
• Domain knowledge allows for a thorough understanding of the business and its unique challenges. For example, when developing insights for Uniswap, it is critical to understand how a decentralised exchange works as well as common terminologies such as TVL, liquidity, and so on.
• Smart contract knowledge aids analysts in deciphering the protocol’s logic and identifying key events/traces to monitor.

Don’t get overwhelmed. It is not as difficult as it sounds.

How to get started?

• Join Dune’s Discord to get access to the community.
• Learn by exploring other user’s dashboards. Dune lets you find dashboards, fork them, and experiment with them to gain a better understanding.
• Begin by generating simple insights (for example, gas analysis) for a specific ecosystem (such as Ethereum or Polygon).
• Start building benchmark metrics for any specific sector (for example, DEX metrics) that you want to focus on (DeFi, NFT, DAO etc.)
• Finally, delve deeply into a specific protocol (eg Yearn, Aave etc). To gain a better understanding, look at previous bounties and existing dashboards.
• Start participating in bounties (as posted in Dune discord), or apply for freelancing or a full-time job, or even launch your own startup.

Dune analytics community dashboard (Source: Dune)

Where to learn further?

Here are some excellent resources for learning more about Dune analytics.

• OurNetwork: recorded sessions from blockchain analytics bootcamp.
• Metrics DAO : community of amazing people empowering analysts to do on chain analytics.
• Dune youtube tutorials

💁 While this may appear daunting, I’ll break down the steps in subsequent blogs to get you started from scratch to creating compelling dashboards in Dune.

Next up: Build an Ethereum overview dashboard in Dune Analytics.

I hope this article has been useful in getting you started with Dune Analytics. Follow me to be notified when my next post goes live. Feel free to reach out if you have any questions or comments. Twitter | LinkedIn

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