OurApproachtoBlockchainIntegrations

Update 2024-05-24: This Article is no longer relevant. Our mission at Dune is to make crypto data accessible. That means integrating as many chains, as fast as possible. Dune Catalyst is leading the way into the future of a 1000 chains. Reach out to us today to explore options to integrate your blockchain!

The most frequent question we encounter on the data side of Dune is “When will X Blockchain be available on Dune?”.

While this seems like a straightforward question, there is more than just the technical implementation that drives our decision making process. This is a multi-year commitment and investment for us.

At Dune, blockchain integrations are seen as a bet on a new chain or growing ecosystem, complete with supporting its unique community of builders. We don’t take this process lightly as each new blockchain can impact the user experience and data accessibility of the platform. This is why we have chosen to be intentional with these partnerships and typically only onboard 2-3 blockchains each quarter.

But how do we sift through the ever-growing list of blockchains? Each quarter we assess 50+ blockchains to identify which ones are the right partners for the upcoming quarter and beyond.

We use the following framework to be consistent with our assessment while allowing flexibility to handle the uniqueness of different blockchains. We concentrate on three core areas, ensuring our choices not only resonate with the current demand but also pave the way for future growth.

1. Blockchain Demand
2. Blockchain Growth
3. Blockchain Technical Complexity

This flowchart summarizes the framework, but we’ll expand on the reasoning for each step below.

Figure 1: The blockchain assessment process at Dune

Step 1: Blockchain Demand

In the first step, we want to assess the demand from the ecosystem. Both in terms of established teams investing their resources and time and our community of dedicated wizards who are eager to understand what is happening on-chain. This step is built on two fundamental questions:

Are prominent blockchain teams building or expanding to this Blockchain?

• Teams like 1inch, Lido, Aave, Steakhouse, Opensea, or Uniswap on EVM chains
• Teams like Jupiter, Pyth, or Solflare on Solana
• We constantly review Discord, Twitter, our Data Request list, and strategic customer feedback
• To find out, we love checking Electrical Capital’s Developer Report, Artemis’ active developer numbers, and a few other internal sources that check Github repo activity.
• We benchmark this data using the active address for the chains Dune currently supports, complementing it with insights from external sources like Artemis’ Terminal or Covalent’s Network Status.
• If non-EVM, how are the smart contract equivalents defined on the blockchain (equivalent of an ABI on EVM or IDL on Solana)?
• If there is no straightforward equivalent, what are the essential pieces of information Dune users will need to dive into the Blockchain and its builder’s activity?
• These tend to be custom tables like inputs and outputs on Bitcoin or account_activity and rewards on Solana

If the blockchain satisfies this framework, we are confident it is a Blockchain we should be onboarding to Dune, as it enables both our community and the blockchain’s ecosystem to have accessible on-chain data. Next step is to discuss a mutually beneficial partnership structure and multi-year agreement.

If you are from a Blockchain team and are interested in seeing your data on Dune, don’t hesitate to reach out to us using the form below, and we will run it through the process!

The Data Must Flow!