On July 10th, Binance's latest Launchpad project's on-chain data analysis platform, Arkham, announced that it will launch the on-chain intelligence trading platform, Arkham Intel Exchange, on July 18th. Users can anonymously buy and sell information about blockchain wallet address owners through smart contracts on this platform. Buyers can post rewards to the community for information, and bounty hunters can submit the requested information to earn rewards, creating the "Intel to earn" mechanism.
For more information about Arkham, please refer to Odaily's article titled "Understanding Binance Launchpad's new project Arkham: What is Intel to earn?"
It is not uncommon for on-chain data analysis platforms to receive large-scale funding from key institutions or be listed on top exchanges. However, we believe that Arkham is not in the same competitive dimension as its "competitors" in the same field, especially with the introduction of the intelligence trading platform, which incorporates token economics and open data trading. This may bring new vitality to the entire on-chain data analysis field.
The Dilemma of On-chain Data Analysis Platforms
Currently, there are numerous on-chain data analysis platforms in various subfields. Some mainstream platforms include Nansen, Dune Analytics, DefiLlama, Footprint Analytics, 0x Scope, Token Terminal, and others. This article won't go into a detailed comparison of these products but if you're interested, you can learn more in the article "The Current Situation and Prospect of On-chain Data Analysis Platforms" released by IOSG Ventures.
Today, our main focus is on a common issue among these platforms: there are so many Web3 data analysis platforms, but as tool-oriented platforms, they rarely charge end-users directly. How do they sustain themselves?
1. Financing: Most projects currently rely on capital funding to cover their costs. Capital also has a demand for data analysis (to assist investment decisions and industry analysis). Data analysis platforms customize their services according to the needs of capital, ensuring diversified data sources, accurate results, and timely delivery.
2. Paid Services: Projects like Dune, Nansen, and others offer value-added services such as enhanced permissions, unlocking additional data dimensions and address labels, catering to users' higher demands for data noise reduction and structuring.
3. Project Collaborations: Different projects in various domains require data analysis or routine data monitoring. They also collaborate with data analysis platforms to improve their own efficiency for making timely adjustments to relevant operations.
Based on the above three points, the survival of data analysis platforms largely depends on revenue from professional data analysts, capital financing, and project collaborations in the B2B sector. Excluding capital financing, the remaining two sources of income do not exhibit strong continuous growth. Most on-chain data analysis platforms still rely on capital financing to sustain their development. The revenue models of these platforms in the foreseeable future are not clear.
As tool-oriented platforms, apart from charging users or displaying advertisements, the Arkham project provides a new answer.
Will Arkham Become the Terminal for On-chain Data Analysis Platforms?
From the perspective of different participants in the market:
1. Most users are not proficient in using on-chain data analysis platforms. The use of such tools is limited to searching for relevant data organized by others, and they do not create the required data retrieval based on their own needs. The degree of personalized customization is limited.
2. The relevant data organized by professional on-chain data analysts does not have reasonable rewards, and can only serve as one means of obtaining traffic.
3. Most project teams need to spend additional manpower costs to hire professional analysts to obtain the desired data.
4. Web3-related institutions, such as investment research and media, need more diverse information.
From the market pain points analysis, the on-chain data intelligence exchange platform Arkham Intel Exchange can solve the above pain points. Its data exchange platform can connect the three groups of "users-platform-professional analysts" and form a commercial closed loop.
The bigger imagination for intelligence trading is actually serving as the port of traffic for various platforms, accepting and digesting the supply capabilities of other data analysis providers.
At the same time, Arkham Intel Exchange also provides new directions for revenue models. The Intel-to-earn model may become a new revenue path for this type of tool race, bringing more returns to the investors.
However, we should also see that established on-chain data analysis platforms have accumulated a large amount of data foundation and research methodology, as well as abundant bilateral resources. Simply launching an intelligence exchange product does not provide strong protection. Other platforms can easily replicate it. Perhaps, we will soon see other data analysis platforms developing this model as well.
But in any case, Arkham's innovation has introduced new scenarios and added new narratives to the tool-class "old track" of blockchain data analysis platforms, providing an opportunity to become a traffic portal in this field.
