Footprint: Becoming the world’s go-to source of on-chain DeFi data
Launched in 2021, Footprint is a blockchain analytics platform on course to become the go-to source of definitive on-chain data.
Built around unmatched on-chain data and do-it-yourself, intuitive visualization tools, the platform aims to become an indispensable tool for any media outlet, an analytics company, or investment firm analyzing and reporting information from the blockchain.
In other words, just as the Bloomberg Terminal opened the doors to real-time information about the traditional financial market, we are creating unrivaled tools to discover the blockchain.
Bloomberg is the world’s largest financial services provider and its black terminals are a ubiquitous presence in any firm or bank that needs accurate information about the market. It also makes some of its revenue from its news businesses.
We recognize an enormous opportunity for financial calculations, trading, monitoring, and investment comparison and execution analysis within the DeFi industry which we aim to capture, just as pioneers in the traditional finance industry like Bloomberg and Reuters Group did with their professional services.
There were 76 million digital currency investors globally as of September 2021, a 40% yearly increase.
Likewise, the DeFi market has exploded with a robust 6-times growth in 2021, having reached a cumulative total of 3.4 mill ion users engaged in DeFi activities and investments.
Data is vital to the financial market and those who have the best data lead in the industry.
Blockchain is this era’s shakeup of the finance industry. With banks and institutions realizing that the train has left the station, they are rapidly integrating it with traditional finance.
In turn, a giant chasm is opening, set to demand unforeseen quantities of DeFi data.
Nobody exists to fill this void because high-quality on-chain DeFi data presents three obstacles.
- The cost of understanding on-chain data
- The difficulty of parsing data
- The technical requirements of processing data
Unlike other platforms that focus on parsing Ethereum data (e.g. Dune, Covalent, and Nansen), Footprint—despite being a new challenger among blockchain data services and analytics platforms—is the first to complete ETL automated parsing of BSC on-chain contracts.
With its self-developed automated parsing model, Footprint is able to accelerate its coverage of public chains and platforms at a rate of two platforms per day.
Footprint Data and Footprint Analytics now available to the public
Footprint Data, the cornerstone of Footprint’s business, provides users with an easier way to access cross-chain, deep, granular, and continuous data.
Footprint is the first panoramic on-chain data service that covers a multidimensional set of primary and derived metrics for chains, contract addresses, wallet addresses, pools, tokens, and more.
However, we want to do more than just the known chains or coins and pools. We want to build data applications around the underlying data. These data sections are closely related to the governance of the data on the chain and allow for secondary development of the data by ecosystem participants, individual investors, media parties, project developers, communities, educators, and financial institutions. Everyone can participate.
Unlike other coin or protocol-centric platforms with limited primary data analysis (e.g., TVL, volume, etc.), Footprint parses data at a granular pool level.
We parse on-chain contract data from a wallet address perspective, allowing analysis of the number of transaction addresses, active addresses, newly generated addresses, the flow of large capital flows, and even the ability to analyze and track wallet addresses for each protocol-specific pool pair.
We treat each pool as a product, observe and analyze each product’s operational data, transaction data, user engagement, user profile, and more. We use a series of metrics to determine yields and trading prices.
As the first data app built on Footprint Data, Footprint Analytics went live in August 2021.
An all-in-one visual blockchain data analysis platform with thousands of free tabulation templates and a drag-and-drop charting experience, it allows anyone to build their own personalized data charts in 10 seconds, quickly being able to understand the so-try behind on-chain data.
Footprint Analytics’ mission is to transform data and information into insights and action.
It provides a convenient and easy-to-use tool for everyone, whether you want to access the underlying data, integrates it as an API, or present it to others.
Some questions that Footprint Analytics can answer include:
- Which public chains are growing fastest?
- How much slower is the total market cap of stablecoins growing?
- What is the return, risk, pool depth, and fees for each pool situation?
- What are the returns for different types of projects?
- What are the returns of whales’ investments?
- What are the best investment strategies to choose to follow?
- Which DeFi pool has the highest yield?
- How do I find a project with potential?
- Is secured lending worth it?
- What are the current gas fees and gas fee trends for ETH?
Just as Bloomberg evolved to serve more and more uses after first finding success in fixed income securities analysis, we believe the opportunities for blockchain data applications will also grow exponentially.
Here are the solutions we’re bringing to the market first:
- From the media perspective
- Capture hot events and news through data to solve the problem of discovering first-hand information
- Research and analyze industry trends, monitoring market heat, public chains, projects, and more
- Cross-compare chains and projects horizontally and vertically, analyzing, and easily sharing the findings
- From a DeFi developer’s perspective
- Analyze the project’s market share within categories and understand my position in the industry
- Know the number of project users, active users, and which projects and pools the lost users are going to
- Understand which pools are better run and more popular with users, which pools have more potential for growth, and the user profile of the pools.
- From a VC perspective
- Understand the market share of public chains/projects and find the projects with tremendous potential and fastest-growing trends.
- Investigate which chains, projects, and categories to invest in
- Analyze the projects already invested in and projects in the same category to see which are operating best
- Clarify the return on investment of the invested projects.
- From an investor’s perspective
- Identify new potential projects to invest in
- Monitor the risk of invested projects, observe the change of TVL and determine whether there is a risk of collapse
- Analyze the invested pools and see whether returns meet expectations while comparing options
- Project future pool returns and simulates investments
We have seen a few platforms monitor pools, but they simply plot the trend of APY or TVL, not quantifying it. We have also taken the best from competitors.
For example, like Glassnode, we’ve brought traditional financial indicators to enrich our interpretation of pool data, e.g., policy indices, national currencies, treasury rates, etc.
We plan to produce more derivative data with pool analysis in the future.
We can calculate the APY data over the investment cycle through these derivative data, understand the changes in volatility, and choose pools that better match our risk appetite.
Similarly, we can also give users more quantitative and structured results.
Here are some examples of Footprint’s use of derivative data:
- Calculating the maximum retracement to check the worst-case scenarios historically
- Calculating excess return per unit of impermanent loss taken to check the Sharpe ratio
- Calculating the P/E percentage to see the value of the token investment in LP pools
These deep processing analysis capabilities are one of Footprint Analytics’ flagship features.
Footprint Data currently covers metrics from over 500 protocols on BSC, Ethereum, and other public chains. Footprint Analytics has also launched more than 20 visual reports (including some 3D dynamic charts), and the community has created over 10,000 dashboards. Footprint plans to start producing deeper analysis reports around pools in Q1.
Bloomberg started with market data in one area: Fixed income securities. It has gradually expanded to include data analytics, data models, news, media, trading systems, and real-time communications. Traders, Ibanks, the Fed, and basically anyone involved in the global financial industry uses their terminals.
History doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes. We believe that DeFi data will also follow a similar pattern of consolidation, that’s why Footprint is moving fast to accumulate a wider spectrum of data than any other platform and develop the most important business segments within the blockchain industry.
To learn more about the Footprint platform and its development, follow along through the following channels.
Footprint Website: https://www.footprint.network/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Footprint_DeFi
Discord: https://discord.gg/3HYaR6USM7
Telegram: https://t.me/joinchat/4-ocuURAr2thODFh
Disclaimer: This is a paid post and should not be treated as news/advice.