TL;DR: We're being more selective about what we accept in Spellbook and cleaning up existing content to improve quality and focus on what matters most to the community.

Community Update

We're refocusing Spellbook to make our efforts more impactful and create a better experience for everyone. We want to thank all our contributors who have helped build Spellbook to where it is today.

So far, we've taken a very hands-off approach to Spellbook contributions. We love all the contributions, ideas and energy, but there's a flipside: the tremendous growth has created operational challenges. We're finding it difficult to adequately support contributors, wizards, customers and enterprise clients. Spellbook has become complex to operate with long-running models, cross-project dependencies and operational intricacies. Users are increasingly overwhelmed by the number of spellbook tables and lack of documentation. Additionally, we've been subsidizing all spellbook models regardless of usage, making it a significant operational expense we need to optimize.

We want to change that by concentrating our efforts where they can have the greatest impact and reliability. This means more reliable spells for users and better opportunities for contributors to work on infrastructure that gets used long-term.

What We're Focusing On

Supporting existing core ecosystem spells

The foundational abstractions that serve thousands of analysts daily, including dex.trades, nft.trades, token transfers, balances and other essential infrastructure.

Building up new sectors as a collaborative effort

When we expand into new areas, we'll do it under our guidance and leadership to ensure quality and consistency. Sometimes this will be incentivized through grants to attract the right expertise and collaborative approach.

Enterprise and blockchain client integrations

These partnerships fund the infrastructure that makes Spellbook possible for everyone while bringing high-quality protocols into our ecosystem.

Redirecting other work

For contributions that don't align with these focus areas, we'll be upfront about fit and help redirect efforts toward higher-impact opportunities.

Cleaning Up Existing Spells

We will also clean up existing spells and remove outdated content, consolidating where there are multiple versions of the same spell in the near future. We'll prioritize keeping spells that are actively used and serve the broader community. More communications and a specific list of spells to be retired will follow next week.

What This Means for Contributors

If you are unsure about whether your model falls under useful models, please open up a draft PR before building all your code or open an Issue in GitHub with a clear outline of what you want to build, why and how it might be useful for people beyond yourself.

Contributors who want maximum impact should consider enhancing existing core spells rather than creating entirely new ones. Improvements to widely-used abstractions reach thousands of users and create opportunities to collaborate with other contributors working on the same foundations.

Ultimately, contributions to Spellbook come in many shades of grey and are not black and white. What might be deemed a niche use case one day could be the next meta tomorrow. Our team will carefully review and assess all contributions and decide on a case by case basis on what to focus on.

These new guidelines and recommendations will also be applied to all PRs that have already been opened.

What This Means for Dune Users

You can expect a more reliable and trustworthy Spellbook experience. We'll be focusing on maintaining and improving the core spells you use most, ensuring they're well-documented, regularly updated, and consistently high quality. Over time, you'll see fewer but better spells, with clearer documentation and more predictable performance. The cleanup of outdated and duplicate spells will make it easier to find what you need and trust that it works as expected.

You might be affected by a small subset of models that are actively being used but still will be retired - in that case you will have to fix the affected queries. We will communicate these specific changes in advance.

Questions?

"Is this abandoning open source?"

No. All code stays open, community input still matters, and quality contributions get full support. We're just being honest about what we can realistically maintain.

"What about smaller protocols?"

If your work strengthens shared abstractions or has broad applicability, size doesn't matter. Show us how it helps more than just your specific use case.

"How do I know if my idea fits?"

Open a discussion or draft PR before you start building. We'll give you honest feedback about whether it aligns with our priorities.

"But what if I really need a spell for my project?"

We understand that sometimes you need specific data abstractions that don't fit our community focus areas. If you have business-critical needs for custom spells, you can work with us as an enterprise client. Please reach out via dune.com/enterprise - this ensures you get dedicated support and faster delivery while helping fund the open-source infrastructure that benefits everyone.

"What are alternatives to spells?"

For team-specific use cases, consider using materialized views (matviews) which can help with slow query performance and create custom abstractions without the overhead of maintaining community spells. Matviews are great for internal analytics, performance optimization, and specialized use cases that don't need to be shared broadly.

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For questions about these changes, please use GitHub Discussions or open an issue in the spellbook repository.

The goal is to build the strongest possible foundation for crypto analytics by bundling our efforts around the infrastructure that serves the most people. This creates better outcomes for everyone: more robust core spells, better collaboration opportunities, and a sustainable path forward.