TL;DR:
Allium, a groundbreaking data exploration platform in the crypto industry, was featured in the Onchain Alpha series. The conversation delved into Allium's genesis, its crucial role in providing high-quality data for the blockchain space, and the challenges analysts face in navigating the complex crypto landscape. Allium aims to streamline data exploration, empower analysts with user-friendly tools, and construct robust data schemas. As the crypto ecosystem evolves, Allium stands at the forefront, revolutionizing data analysis and shaping the future of blockchain insights.
Key Takeaways:
Allium aims to provide accurate, simple, and fast data to various segments of the blockchain market.
Data is crucial in accounting, auditing, stablecoins, NFTs, DEXs, institutional staking, and other areas of the blockchain ecosystem.
There is a need to improve the accessibility and user experience of blockchain data for data analysts.
Creating data schemas is a complex and resource-intensive process, but advancements in AI may help streamline it in the future. Allium focuses on providing high-quality, real-time data indexing for the blockchain industry.
They help solve data plumbing problems and save their partners time and money.
Allium has been working on civil detection for airdrops, clustering wallets across different chains to identify potential fraud.
They constantly add new chains to their platform and aim to cover 80-90% of people's use cases in the next three months.
Interested analysts can sign up for a trial and receive clear answers on whether Allium can help or not.
In the final episode of the Onchain Alpha series, listeners were treated to an insightful conversation between the host, Humpty, and Ethan from Allium, a pioneering data exploration platform. The conversation shed light on the genesis of Allium, its pivotal role in the blockchain landscape, and the challenges and opportunities inherent in navigating the complex terrain of crypto data analysis.
A Multilayered Approach to Blockchain Data
The podcast began with a breakdown of the origin of Allium, a word derived from the vegetable family of the same name that is known for its numerous layers. Despite what many people think, Allium is not named after a metal; rather, it represents the platform's dedication to integrating a variety of blockchain ecosystems. Speaking on behalf of Allium, Ethan explained how the platform came to be, citing a desire to solve the lack of complete data, especially on the Tron network, where his blockchain adventure began.
A major theme of the discussion was the critical value of high-quality data in the cryptocurrency space, which was emphasized by Allium's crucial contribution of data for a groundbreaking study on the growing use of stablecoins in the Tron network. This insightful analysis emphasized the geopolitical implications of the spread of stablecoins on Tron in addition to highlighting new developments.
Ethan discusses his role in providing data for a report on the rising use of stablecoins on the Tron network, which helped bring attention to the topic. They mention collaborating with other analysts and organizations to push the narrative forward. Ethan also reflects on the geopolitical significance of stablecoins on Tron and the importance of high-quality data in the crypto space. Additionally, they introduce themselves as coming from an AI background and discovering crypto as a potential solution to the data bottleneck issue in the industry.
Allium's Role in the Crypto Space
Ethan explained the difficult problems that come with doing data research in the blockchain space, focusing specifically on Ethereum's EtherScan as a key, if not perfect, data source. In these difficulties, Allium appeared as a ray of hope, providing a method intended to provide precise, efficient, and quick data for a variety of crypto use cases.
Ethan discusses the challenges of data exploration in the blockchain industry, specifically referring to Ethereum's EtherScan as a crucial source of information despite its limitations and the massive amount of data it handles. Ethan then shares how they identified the need for a solution like Allium, which aims to provide accurate, simple, and fast data for various use cases in the blockchain space, including accounting and auditing, stablecoins, NFTs, DEXs, and institutional staking.
The team behind Allium recognized that while data is a broad term, the blockchain industry shares a significant amount of data, making it an ideal candidate for tailored services. The team approached the problem by understanding the different use cases and prioritizing them, recognizing that data gaps are often overlooked as a priority.
Allium's User-Centric Approach
Key to Allium's value proposition is its attempt to improve analysts' user experience by reimagining the blockchain as a dynamic credit and debit system. Thanks to this creative framework, analysts can use strong tools to interpret past balances and net flows and traverse the complex crypto world with never-before-seen simplicity.
Ethan discusses the importance of easy data access for crypto companies interacting with blockchain data. The blockchain functions as both a financial ledger and a computer, making it a valuable source of data for various applications. With the increasing need for crypto companies to access blockchain data, there's a growing demand for tools that make data exploration more accessible for analysts.
Allium aims to improve the user experience for analysts by representing the entire blockchain as a credit and debit system, allowing users to query and sum columns to find historical balances and net flows. The product also parses out token types and USD prices at the time of transactions, making the data analysis process more efficient and intuitive for non-crypto analysts.
The Art of Data Schema Construction
Ethan discussed the difficult but necessary work of creating effective data structures, highlighting balanced data in particular. Despite requiring a lot of resources, this fundamental schema is a pillar of Allium's dedication to providing analysts with strong analytical frameworks.
Ethan discusses the importance of building efficient data schemas for analyzing crypto data, specifically focusing on balanced data. He mentions that the balance schema is the most expensive and time-consuming schema his company has ever built, as they update it in real-time for every existing wallet. Ethan explains that they made this investment despite the challenges because they believed it was necessary. Regarding the process of creating these schemas, he shares that they have been asked about using AI to help define them but held off due to the significant resource investment required.
However, they have recently implemented an LLM model to recommend queries and answer natural language questions about schemas, which they believe will make the data more accessible.
Ethan expresses cautious optimism about this new feature but acknowledges that it's still early days. When asked about the growing infrastructure ecosystem and its impact on data complexity, he expresses that as long as there is a good user experience, they don't mind the complexity that lies beneath. From an operational perspective, they acknowledge that it will add more overhead for indexing data.
Allium's Role in an Ever-Evolving Ecosystem
In addition, the conversation strayed to the growing importance of data providers such as Allium in a time of new chains and protocols. In light of this increasing complexity, Allium aims to provide high-fidelity data across various chains, providing analysts with critical insights.
Ethan discusses the importance of data providers like Allium in the rapidly expanding blockchain space. With the proliferation of new chains and protocols, such as Arbitrum, Optimism, Polygon, and Cosmos, it is impossible for any one team or protocol to keep up with the data from all of these chains.
New Mint on Zora in this clip, @thedatadood discusses onchain data, Ordinals and BRC20 with @ethanyish of Allium
Mint short on Zora now!
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And check out the full pod on YouTube
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Allium focuses on providing high-quality data efficiently and broadly across various chains. He acknowledges the significant effort required to index new chains and the uncertainty of their longevity but emphasizes the importance of being the best at data indexing and automation. Allium's goal is to help analysts and businesses solve their data needs quickly and effectively.
Real-World Applications: Allium's Impact on the Crypto Sphere
After much discussion, a fascinating overview of Allium's wide range of uses in the cryptocurrency space was presented, including helping with airdrop detection and powering in-the-moment apps like Phantom Wallet during the Jupiter airdrop. Especially, Allium's critical function in civil detection highlights its larger goal of developing a robust and sustainable crypto economy.
Ethan discusses some of the interesting use cases of Allium, a data exploration platform, in the crypto industry. Over the past few months, Allium has helped major protocols like Civil, JTO, Jupiter, and Wormhole with airdrop detection, saving tens to hundreds of millions of dollars for these protocols. Humpty, who comes from an analytics background, found it exciting to combine infrastructure and complex graph algorithms for data analysis.
Allium is also one of the few analytics providers that power real-time applications, as shown in their support for Phantom Wallet during the Jupiter airdrop. Humpty notes the high stakes and high adrenaline nature of working in the crypto industry and the fun of scaling systems at the enterprise level. Airdrops are a significant part of the crypto ecosystem, with some serving as retroactive rewards and others as onboarding tools. Civil detection is crucial to ensure that companies aren't wasting money on airdrops by identifying genuine participants and preventing gaming.
Ethan discusses the evolution of airdrops and their purpose in the crypto space. Airdrops are seen as marketing incentivization schemes designed to make users more loyal to a protocol or ecosystem. However, Humpty argues that the current model of giving tokens with no clear incentive for long-term use or contribution back to the ecosystem can lead to pumping and dumping behavior.
Humpty suggests that a more effective approach could be drawing inspiration from non-crypto loyalty programs, where points earned can only be used to buy more of the same product or service. This concept could potentially incentivize users to engage more deeply with the ecosystem. Ethan also acknowledges the ongoing challenge of civil detection in the crypto space as adversaries become more sophisticated. Ethan emphasizes the importance of aligning incentives with desired actions to create a more sustainable ecosystem.
Looking Ahead: Allium's Continued Evolution
As they came to an end, Ethan expressed how much he had enjoyed the discussion and how much he looked forward to Allium's future development. In the meantime, Humpty gave an exclusive look into how they create content and hinted at a new series that will explore the complex fields of blockchain data analysis in greater detail.
Humpty expresses his excitement about the potential of decentralized social apps and protocols like Farcaster for analyzing on-chain data. He shares his background in analyzing social networks and the promise of being able to transport friend graphs between different platforms. The speaker also mentions his interest in using Farcaster for civil detection and understanding wallet data from a personal perspective. He further discusses Alium, a data platform that aims to help with various data problems, including performance and finance, and currently supports 22 chains with plans to add almost one per week. The trial for Alium is not publicly accessible yet due to its inability to handle a large number of users while maintaining quality.
Ethan expresses his appreciation for the conversation and shares that he is excited to see what Allium continues to do. Humpty explains Crypto Sapien’s content creation process, which involves producing podcasts on specific topics and repurposing the content across various platforms. They also announced the start of a new series next week, which will delve deeper into the topics discussed in this conversation.
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All in all, the conversation between Allium and Onchain Alpha represents the revolutionary possibilities of data discovery in the cryptocurrency space and signals the beginning of a new period of creativity, understanding, and empowerment. One thing is clear as Allium keeps pushing the boundaries of blockchain data analysis: innovative platforms like Allium, which can provide light on the way forward during the complex blockchain environment, are key to the future of cryptocurrency.
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