In the rapidly evolving world of blockchain, solid analytics is paramount. Datrics, with its expertise, has established itself as the analytics partner for the NEAR Foundation. By leveraging data-driven strategies, Datrics ensures that NEAR's business & marketing efforts are both efficient and effective.
The NEAR Foundation is a non-profit, non-beneficiary foundation based in Switzerland that supports community-driven innovation with a specific focus on open-source Web3 projects and tooling on the NEAR Protocol.
In 2021, the NEAR Foundation shared a brief with Datrics to develop a set of analytical tools that could identify the most promising projects built on the protocol, support them, and issue grants, to facilitate the growth of the NEAR ecosystem. It was the start of a partnership that, within six months, would become a foundation for data-driven development and decision-making for the entire project's ecosystem.
"We were looking for an experienced development and data analytics partner who could own the strategizing and development process and deliver the exact result our business needed" — says David Weinstein, Chief of Staff and Head of Analytics at NEAR Foundation.
On-chain data analytics involves analyzing transactions and activities directly recorded on the blockchain. Datrics delves deep into this realm, extracting valuable insights from the NEAR Protocol. This form of analytics is crucial for understanding user behavior, transaction patterns, and the overall health of the blockchain ecosystem.
While on-chain data provides insights directly from the blockchain, off-chain data offers a broader view from external sources. Integrating both on-chain and off-chain data by Datrics ensures a holistic understanding of user behavior, enabling NEAR Foundation to make informed decisions.
Off-chain data analytics encompasses data sources outside the blockchain, such as web behavior, social media interactions, and GitHub repositories. Datrics seamlessly integrates this data, complementing the on-chain insights and providing a comprehensive analysis that drives NEAR's strategies.
The task that the NEAR Foundation set for Datrics was to build end-to-end analytics that could measure the ecosystem's health and key success metrics. The analytical system was conceived with the ambitious goal of obtaining insights throughout the entire portfolio of projects developed on the protocol. These included community activities, overall contributions to the product, and user retention.Here's a brief introduction to what features Datrics had to deliver:
It all started with a pilot period of 1.5 months. NEAR Foundation and Datrics worked together to better understand whether the partnership was a good fit for both companies.
"It came as a real surprise when, at the end of this period, Datrics managed to deliver more than some other companies committed to doing over the course of six or more months", says David Weinstein.
During this short period, Datrics managed to develop a complete set of analytics that covered the key components of ecosystem success including:
On average, the development of analytics within blockchain projects still leaves much to be desired. This means that systematic work with key marketing and growth metrics remains impossible. Blockchain analytics has traditionally lacked the consistency and reach of traditional web analytics.
The uniqueness of the analytical system developed for NEAR Foundation lies in building a seamless connection between the web activity and its on-chain component.
By combining its analysis of web and on-chain user activity, NEAR Foundation managers can identify and amplify weaknesses in user acquisition and effectively adjust the retention strategy.
The entire set of analytics is presented as a series of dashboards that allow custom filtering and provides insights into the success of the NEAR community as both developers and general users.
Today, the set of metrics is widely-used at the company to identify and nurture the most successful projects in the NEAR ecosystem. The acquired data allows team members to identify strong product and marketing strategies and abandon weak ones by adjusting advertising budgets and prioritizing product development.
"After working with Datrics for more than six months, it's obvious we made the right choice in data analysts. We received unique results that helped NEAR enhance its business vision and become better partners for our community. When it comes to blockchain and web data, I can't recommend Datrics enough. The guys have unique skills and expertise in this market", concludes David Weinstein.
