FiDi: Polkadot’s Code-Free Intelligence

We are opening a treasury proposal in the next few days and welcome any feedback before proceeding. Below, you'll find a summary of the proposal, with the complete detailed document linked at the end.

tl;dr An open-source analytics platform showcasing Polkadot’s vibrant activity with an intuitive, code-free interface. It empowers developers, analysts, and networks through equal support for all parachains and brings together all major data providers within Polkadot into a single presentation layer.

Problem and Solution Summary

The most successful blockchain networks rely on deep analytics to tell compelling stories with data, act on insights, measure performance, and inspire newcomers. Robust analytical suites empower ecosystems to attract new users, foster growth, and drive innovation.

The Polkadot ecosystem faces critical challenges in data visibility, analytics, and accessibility that hinder its growth and recognition. Despite its technological prowess, the network lacks a comprehensive resource showcasing its full range of on-chain activity, potentially excluding it from broader blockchain comparisons. This fragmentation extends to analytics, where siloed platforms offer partial coverage, prioritizing certain parachains and metrics while neglecting others. The result is an incomplete picture of Polkadot's overall health and dynamics, particularly when comparing EVM and Substrate-based chains.

These issues are compounded by the technical barriers to entry for data analysis, inconsistent data integrity across platforms, and the high costs associated with indexing and analytics. Developers struggle with a complex journey, relying on multiple tools for insights, while the ecosystem grapples with data redundancy concerns. The absence of a unified, user-friendly, and trustworthy analytics platform not only impedes Polkadot's visibility but also limits its ability to showcase its true potential as a leading blockchain network.

Enter Polkadot's Code-Free Intelligence: we propose the development of a comprehensive analytics platform that will serve as the definitive source of truth for all Polkadot activity, catering to both technical and non-technical users. By providing a holistic view of the ecosystem and its parachains, FiDi will showcase the vibrant activity across Polkadot at a glance, effectively boosting the network's visibility and competitiveness in the blockchain space.

This platform will act as a single presentation layer while remaining data source-agnostic and integrating a wide array of indexers, oracles, aggregators, and analytics providers in Polkadot, allowing users to select their preferred and most trusted sources. It will have the ability to be hosted at analytics.polkadot.network or a similar domain. By consolidating these data streams into a single, user-friendly presentation layer, FiDi breaks down existing analytics silos and offers a unified view of the network's health and dynamics.

This approach democratizes access to critical blockchain insights, enabling users of all technical backgrounds to explore and interpret Polkadot's on-chain activity with ease.

Parts of this proposal serve as a response to the RFP: Data Analysis Tools for Substrate-based Blockchains.

Status of Polkadot’s Code-Free Intelligence

The groundwork for this initiative has been laid out in an open-source analytics product and multiple time-tested use cases that have been embraced by the Polkadot’s community:

1. FiDi: Analytics Data Platform for DotSama

FiDi’s Code-Free Intelligence is rooted in the Web3 Foundation’s grant DotSight. It served as a response to Polkadot’s Analytics needs within RFP #1539 and was successfully delivered in April 2024. Since then, FiDi’s core team and the open-source community have been extending the platform to a variety of use cases serving Polkadot’s users and its parachains’ needs. Code-Free Analytics in Action. Data Source: Parity DotLake.

2. Code-Free Analytics

This community-supported extension of DotSight is focused on self-service analytics. It requires no prior SQL or coding expertise and caters primarily to non-technical users. It gives complete flexibility in choosing desired data providers, metrics, and visualization methods.

Partial support for most common Polkadot data providers is available, including those from the Parity Data team, Colorful Notion (BigQuery), Subsquid, DappRadar, and others.

Code-Free Analytics in Action. Data Source: Parity DotLake.

3. Network and dApp Analytics

Custom-built network and project analytics for Moonbeam have been developed in partnership with the Foundation. It features a broad network overview highlighting top-performing projects across Transactions, Interactions, New and Returning Active Wallets, Gas Fees breakdown, and other metrics.

Under the hood, it acts as a hosted customized DotSight use case with its own indexing as a primary data source. Indexing is done in partnership with SQD (fka Subsquid), and FiDi serves as a presentation layer on top of the aggregated on-chain data.

The project comes with a best-in-class contract discovery detecting activity from creator/deployer wallets, associated treasury wallets, and the project’s smart contracts. Illustratively, for Stellaswap, FiDi indexes 329 contracts versus 14 contracts currently available on DappRadar.

Network & dApp Analytics: Cohort Analysis for Bridges in 2024

4. Wallet Analytics

Another time-tested use case enables Polkadot users to track all of their wallets across multiple parachains on a single platform with in-depth insights into staking and lending performance not available elsewhere.

Path to Polkadot’s Intelligence

Now that the architectural groundwork has been laid out and the proof points validated, we are looking to build a robust data source-agnostic intelligence product for all of Polkadot.

At the highest level, this would require us to (a) extend the data providers collection to additional sources, e.g., Dune, SubScan, and LimeChain, (b) broaden coverage for those currently supported, e.g., Parity’s DotLake and Colorful Notion, and (c) extend the repository of metrics and widgets available for the community.

Team & Ask

FiDi brings together a team of seasoned builders, data experts, and venture-backed operators with extensive experience in data analytics, infrastructure, and web3. The team's collective background includes building large-scale systems at world-leading tech companies such as Twitter, Meta, Google, Netflix, and Yandex.

FiDi is the team born and raised within Polkadot. Since early 2022, we’ve made a meaningful impact on the ecosystem by providing a free Portfolio Analytics product with advanced analytics for both EVM and substrate. We are committed to Polkadot as a proud member of Astar’s dApp builders program and serving collators and their users with advanced analytics. Throughout 2023 and 2024 FiDi is also a part of the Lunar Gaming effort, an ongoing collaboration between FiDi, Collators in the Moonbeam/Moonriver ecosystem, and the gaming projects within the ecosystem to accelerate adoption within the gaming sector.

Most recently, FiDi showcased Polkadot Analytics at ETHDenver’s Polkadot booth serving Parity’s DotLake data, successfully delivered the Analytics Data Platform for DotSama project, supported by the Web3 Foundation, and partnered with Moonbeam Foundation on customized advanced analytics for user and dApp activity on the network.

FiDi is asking for $406,403 | (93,699 DOT) [Sep 19: updated the USD amount to reflect the market rate] to achieve milestones 1 through 11 encompassing development, data provider integration, deployment, and an additional year of infrastructure and user support. These milestones are designed to elevate the developer experience on Polkadot to new heights. As Polkadot's Code-Free Intelligence advances, it aims to catalyze activity on the network, driving increased demand for the DOT token and attracting new users to the ecosystem.

Advocates & Testimonials

Advocates for FiDi's Code-free Intelligence platform include respected contributors, thought leaders, and experts within the Polkadot ecosystem. Distractive, a Web3 marketing agency, has highlighted the need for an accessible, code-free, and credible one-stop solution that provides a comprehensive analytical view of the ecosystem. Nate, Distractive’s cofounder, comments: “I’ve had a great experience working with the FiDi team on the Moonbeam front. Built a great product as well”.

Parity's Data Team supports this initiative by contributing parts of the DotLake data product, aiming to extend its reach and bring insights to a wider audience. Moonbeam Foundation is an early adopter of FiDi’s code-free analytics product. SQD (fka Subsquid) backs the effort to visualize high-quality indexed data across the entire Polkadot network making the analytics accessible for all users.

This group, along with other supporters, recognizes FiDi's potential to become a definitive source of information for Polkadot activity, catering to both technical and non-technical users.

Link to the full proposal.

Thanks, and excited about your feedback.

Updates Sep 19:

Contrary to common assumptions, this proposal is about aggregating data from existing data providers on a single platform, not about building a new data provider.

Our expanding steering committee includes founders from Distractive, SQD, and leadership from Parity Data, and we encourage expert community voices to also join.

We’re seeing a lot of conviction from collator/validator communities, tremendous support from dApp projects across all of Polkadot, and marketing and content creation teams.

The need is clear for Polkadot today. Follow along the #UnitePolkadotData week on X to hear the voice of the community.

Day 1. Imagine polkadot.com with business intelligence for all parachains AND all dApps. EVM, Substrate, everything.

Day 2. Marketing perspective from a Community Evangelist @distractivexyz.

Day 3. Validators perspective from @saxemberg.

Day 4. New @Moonbeam dApp project perspective.