Feb 22, 2022
Web3 Data Startup Dune Analytics Hits Unicorn Status
By Derek Bobbitt, originally published on February 22, 2022.
Dune Analytics, an open crypto-analytics company based out of Oslo, Norway, recently reached a $1 billion valuation after closing their last funding round led by Coatue Management, Multicoin Capital, and Dragonfly Capital.
The firm raised $69.420M to distribute financial rewards to content creators and attract up to 1 million new Web 3 Analysts (or as they like to call themselves, “Wizards”), which officially brings their valuation to the unicorn-status mark. And yes, they totaled their funding raise to those numbers on purpose.
The Dune Analytics platform gives you all the tools to query, extract, and visualize vast amounts of data from the blockchain, unlocking the power of public, ledger-style data by making it accessible to everyone. Dune’s on-chain crypto data tools allow users to create real-time dashboards on blockchains like Ethereum, Polygon, Optimism, Binance Smart Chain, and Gnosis Chain. To sustain the appetite for data on hundreds of thousands of transactions every day, they work with node providers across the industry to feed data into their database. Generally speaking, a cryptocurrency node is a participant in a blockchain network. Without blockchain nodes, there is no blockchain, as they enable the most important feature that makes blockchain technology unique: decentralization. This data is pulled from the smart contracts driving transactions on the designated chain, and placed into Dune’s massive database.
From here, all users do is enter an SQL query and the results are shown in a generated visualization such as a bar or pie chart. For my example, I chose to run a simple SQL query created by a fellow “wizard” to visualize Uniswap’s Weekly Trading Volume (Uniswap is a decentralized exchange on the Ethereum network). As you can see, using only a few lines of code, I was able to visualize the volume traded on the exchange on a week by week basis! This example also highlights one of the most amazing aspects of the platform as well, its open community. All queries made by users on the platform are able to be discovered, saved, called, and even forked (a term for copying code). Of course, if you are a larger crypto company that would like to keep your queries to yourself, you can always pay for their premium services. Their paid subscription-based product, starting at $390 per month per user, allows super-users to get a more customized experience, such as private queries and data exports. Practically all of the top names in crypto are Dune’s clients.
Dune has come a long way since Fredrik Hiring Haga and Mats Olsen founded the company in 2018, with revenue reaching $185,000 in 2020 (See Table 1 below). To date, over 10k analysts have created about 100,000 queries on Dune’s platform. These public data queries cover everything from OpenSea NFT collections, customized balance sheets for decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), trading volume on decentralized exchanges (DEXs), and more! This data provides a lot of value to crypto-natives, allowing them to create queries on their wallets and track their income and expenses. It is valuable to investors searching for information that could be crucial to timing entries into cryptocurrency markets and choosing the right DeFi exchanges to operate on through daily trading volume data. It is also valuable to startups and businesses adopting Web 3 technologies as they can access data on a DEX’s transactions or on DeFi protocol’s API performance to make smarter business decisions. Overall, I see Dune becoming a massively valuable company to everyone as crypto technologies continue its path to mass adoption and especially to blockchain-based startups who need to parse through the data.
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Thank you for reading this insight written by Derek Bobbitt, an Associate in the Mel Rines Angel Investment Fund. To learn more about The Fund, please visit https://www.rinesfund.com/
Derek is a sophomore from Nashua, NH who is pursuing a major in Business Administration with dual options in Finance and Information Systems & Business Analytics from UNH. He joined the Fund with hopes to foster his interest in entrepreneurship and learn the perspective of an investor in early-stage private equity investments. Currently, he is the founder of FlutterBricks, a SaaS company aiming to speed up the UI workflow of mobile app developers, and NFT Customs, an e-commerce business where customers upload and verify ownership of their NFTs to be placed on merchandise like sneakers and watches. On campus, he is also the VP of the UNH Entrepreneurship Club and a Shaw Explorer.
