Crypto Gloss

Dune Analytics

Dune Analytics is one of the most powerful public tools for understanding the blockchain economy. Before Dune, analyzing on-chain data required either running your own blockchain node and writing custom data extraction code, or paying for expensive proprietary data APIs. Dune made on-chain analysis accessible to anyone who knows SQL. A researcher can open Dune, write a SQL query in minutes, and instantly visualize how much TVL Uniswap has had over the last 90 days, which wallets bought PEPE on day one, or which MEV bots earned the most in a given week. This openness created a global community of “Dune wizards” — analysts who contribute public dashboards that have become essential reference material for the crypto industry.

How Dune Works

The following sections cover this in detail.

The Data Model

Key table types on Ethereum:

  • ethereum.transactions — every transaction (hash, from, to, value, gas, block)
  • ethereum.logs — every event emitted by smart contracts
  • ethereum.traces — internal transaction calls
  • erc20.transfer — all ERC-20 transfer events with token metadata
  • Protocol-specific decoded tables (e.g., uniswap_v3.swap, aave_v3.borrow)

Decoded ABIs: Dune maintains ABI decoders for thousands of contracts. This means instead of raw hex event data, you can query uniswap_v3.swap and get human-readable amount0, amount1, sqrtPriceX96 columns.

SQL on Blockchain

  • JOINs across tables (e.g., join transaction data with NFT transfer data)
  • Window functions (e.g., 7-day moving average TVL)
  • CTEs (complex multi-step queries)
  • Aggregations, filters, subqueries — all standard SQL

Visualizations

  • Line charts (time series)
  • Bar charts
  • Pie/donut charts
  • Scatter plots
  • Counter tiles
  • Raw tables

Multiple visualizations combine into a dashboard — a shareable URL showing a collection of charts about a topic.

Supported Chains

As of 2025, Dune supports 20+ chains:

  • Ethereum (deepest data, most community dashboards)
  • Solana
  • Bitcoin
  • BNB Chain
  • Polygon
  • Arbitrum, Optimism, Base
  • Avalanche, Fantom
  • Gnosis, Scroll, zkSync, Linea
  • And growing…

Cross-chain queries let analysts aggregate data across chains in a single query.

Notable Use Cases

The following sections cover this in detail.

Protocol Analytics

  • Uniswap’s official dashboard tracks volume, TVL, fee revenue by pool
  • Aave tracks borrow/supply rates, liquidations, reserve health
  • Lido tracks ETH staked, stakers, withdrawal queue

These became the industry standard for on-chain transparency.

Trader Research

  • Find “smart money” wallets that made early trades in successful tokens
  • Track when whale accumulation/distribution patterns emerge
  • Monitor DEX volume anomalies (potential wash trading)
  • Analyze memecoin holder distribution (% held by top 10 wallets)

Ecosystem Health Metrics

  • Daily active users/wallets by chain
  • Gas fee trends
  • MEV extraction statistics
  • Bridge flow data (cross-chain liquidity movements)

NFT and Token Research

  • Token holder distribution and concentration
  • Airdrop farming detection

The Dune Wizard Community

Dune’s community-created dashboards have become some of the most cited research resources in crypto:

Notable community dashboards:

  • Hagaetc’s MEV dashboard — tracking MEV extraction across DEXs; cited by Flashbots research
  • Hildobby’s Ethereum L2 trackers — daily transactions and TVL across all major L2s
  • Jhackworth’s BTC inscriptions tracker — Ordinals and Runes activity
  • Dragonfly Capital’s market dashboards — cited in institutional research

Many “wizards” (power-user analysts) are hired by protocols, VCs, or data firms based on their Dune reputation.

Dune Business Model

Free tier: All public dashboards are free to view. Creating and running queries is free with rate limits.

Dune Teams (paid pro plans):

  • Private queries/dashboards (not public)
  • Faster query execution
  • Higher API rate limits
  • Used by protocols and hedge funds who need private analysis

Dune API: Commercial API access for integrating Dune query results into applications, trading systems, or research products.

Alternatives

Platform Focus Strength
Dune Analytics SQL-based custom queries Flexible, community, free
Nansen Wallet labeling & smart money Pre-built analytics, labeled wallets
Flipside Crypto Enterprise analytics Structured data, SDK
The Graph Indexing protocol Real-time data for dApps
Footprint No-code dashboards Easier for non-SQL users

Dune and Nansen serve different use cases: Dune for custom research, Nansen for wallet-labeled flow analysis.

Social Media Sentiment

Dune is universally respected in crypto. When Messari, Bankless, or crypto VC research references on-chain data, they typically link a Dune dashboard. The platform is considered essential infrastructure for serious on-chain analysis. Criticism is mostly about UX: Dune’s query editor can be slow for heavy queries, the data freshness (latency from chain to Dune tables) is measured in hours rather than seconds for some chains, and the SQL requirement excludes non-technical users. DuneSQL migration (from PostgreSQL to Trino/Presto-based DuneSQL) in 2023 caused community friction as many old queries broke. Long-term, Dune faces competition from AI-powered analytics tools that allow natural language querying of on-chain data — but as of 2025, Dune remains the dominant platform for custom blockchain analytics among power users.

Last updated: 2026-04

How to Use Dune

  1. Create a free account at dune.com
  2. Browse community dashboards for topics you want to analyze
  3. Click “Fork” on any existing query to modify it for your use case
  4. Learn DuneSQL from Dune Docs
  5. Publish your dashboards — the community votes on quality through saves/stars

Stock crypto for protocol analysis:

Secure holdings:

Related Terms

Sources

Chen, T., Li, X., Luo, X., & Zhang, X. (2017). Under-Optimized Smart Contracts Devour Your Money. IEEE SANER 2017.

Gudgeon, L., Perez, D., Harz, D., Livshits, B., & Gervais, A. (2020). DeFi Protocols for Loanable Funds: Interest Rates, Liquidity and Market Efficiency. ACM AFT.

Aramonte, S., Huang, W., & Schrimpf, A. (2021). DeFi Risks and the Decentralisation Illusion. BIS Quarterly Review.

Bartoletti, M., Lepore, C., Luzio, A., & Murgia, A. (2021). A Theory of Automated Market Makers in DeFi. COORDINATION 2021.

Nakatsuka, T., & Ohta, N. (2022). Design and Evaluation of a Blockchain Data Analytics Framework. IEEE Blockchain 2022.