The long way of Blockchain Analytics

Recently I have been looking for a way how to do an analysis of blockchain data and here is what I found:

The challenges of blockchain data analytics: As we know that blockchain is a public distributed ladger that is stored on decentralized storage. Blockchain networks such Bitcoin is started in 2009, while Ethereum in 2015. Those two blockchain networks have really huge size of data.

Another problem is, that it is really hard to query blockchain data on-chain directly. Hence there are some tools that are really useful to unlock the insight from the blockchain data. Here is what I found so far.

Source: https://ournetwork.mirror.xyz/gP16wLY-9BA1E_ZuOSv1EUAgYGfK9mELNza8cfgMWPQ

From the picture above, we can understand that there are three ways to get blockchain data, especially in this case Ethereum data.

1. Sync Eth data to your own PC using such as the Geth client application. This is possible, however, as a data scientist or analyst that want to have exposure to crypto data. I do not really need this approach.
2. Using node endpoint as services like Infura. There are also many infrastructure providers that run Eth node and open API endpoint that we can use it. However, since the purpose is to do web3 data analytics, I think I do not need this approach as well.
3. Data Mappers: the app that provides data that is ready to be analyzed. In this case, the raw data from Ethereum or other blockchain networks have been mapped to multiple schemas that are ready to be analyzed using popular query languages such as SQL or GraphQL. There are many apps that working on this part, and I will focus on this part.

Web3 public data that is ready to be analyzed using SQL or GraphQL such as:

1. Do blockchain ETL, if you have knowledge of ETL (extract transform and load) blockchain data, you can do this. This public GitHub repo is very useful if you want to try this approach. Currently, many blockchain networks ETL source code are available such as: Ethereum, Polygon, Solana, etc.
2. Google BigQuery provides public web3 data such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. If you are familiar with Google Bigquery then this option can be considered.
3. Dune Analytics: this web app is really useful, it is free to use, and there are so many public dashboards available over there. As a newbie in blockchain analytics, those public dashboards really help me much. I can just directly fork queries from the expert and learn! SQL is a must and of course, understanding how the Eth or other networks work is also a must.
4. FlipsideCrypto: If you like challenges and you are a bounty hunter, this app is your option. There are many data analytics bounties that we can join, so instead of only learning we also can earn! The database schema used by FlipsideCrypto is also different compared to Dune Analytics. So, if you are moving from Dune to Flipside, you have to prepare.
5. Footprint.network: From my perspective, this app is quite similar to Dune Analytics. However, this app tries to fill the gap of Dune Analytics. Without SQL understanding, we cannot do data analytics on Dune Analytics. Meanwhile, in Footprint, we can just drag and drop data visualizations to create and publish a dashboard. We can just search the most common queries searched by analysts that are already provided by footprint.
6. Bitquery: if you prefer to use GraphQL instead of SQL, then this is your option. There are also many public GraphQL dashboards available on Bitquery, however, not as many as SQL dashboards on Dune Analytics. Moreover, GraphQL is commonly used to fetch the data and used in front-end apps. We also need to define the Graph schema before we can use it.
7. Graph protocol: If Bitquery is a centralized GraphQL provider, then the Graph is a decentralized service of GraphQL. This project is really interesting. We can create a subgraph of GraphQL and use the subgraph to get the blockchain data. We need to have $GRT to do this!

So far, I prefer to use Dune Analytics, and here my Dune account, it is because of some reasons:

1. Free to use
2. Many public dashboards from experts are available
3. I want to go deeply into crypto so I must understand how crypto projects work and understand SQL very well.
4. Data availability, so far I do analysis on Eth, Bsc, and Solana and all are available on Dune.
5. I might move to FlipsideCrypto if I feel the DB schema on FlipsideCrypto is easier compared to Dune. I will update my decision as soon as I finish exploring FlipsideCrypto.

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