Proposal: Analytics WG [Draft]

[blasfermi]

Analytics Working Group (AWG)

building data-driven narratives to support the growth of Jupiter and its WGs

Introduction

Update & Conclusion (Jul 3rd): after learning more about the newly-developing Grants program, our team decided that would be a faster and more flexible route than a Working Group re: producing demonstrable value toward analytics demand. A grant-funded approach also offers the opportunity to generate an MVP/proof-of-concept for something like the AWG, thus validating where to focus resources and how much to commit. Thanks to JupDAO for all the constructive feedback and support!

Intro Note (Jun 21st): this draft examines whether Grants or a Working Group (WG) is the optimal approach for delivering analytics and insights. By presenting this as a live case study, we aim to engage the community in a meaningful discussion & critique, providing valuable perspectives on the most effective method to fund & support analytics and similar initiatives moving forward. See Challenges & Risks for more details on this matter.

Every nascent industry is a stormy sea in which founders, investors, speculators, reporters and influencers are desperately searching for signals: frames of reference to show them X is growing rapidly, Y is overtaking X, Z is the new Y… any port in a storm for more informed decisions.

The players who produce insightful metrics early & often stand to gain significant public mindshare, all while influencing the direction of what’s worth measuring. As the most extensive protocol on the fastest-moving blockchain, Jupiter is primed for such a spotlight. To that end, we’re introducing the Analytics Working Group.

Problems

Growth & Adoption

For Jupiter, 10x growth requires adoption beyond Solana. The core team, Uplink WG, WWG and others are doing their part to position Jup for these non-native audiences (GUM, welcome.jup.ag, etc) — but to attract ETH maxis, BTC holders, and non-crypto normies, unbiased third parties with their own non-Solana audiences need to consistently reference Jupiter as a reliable authority & launchpad of opportunity.

Data Democratization

While blockchains provide famously accessible datasets, most of Jup’s end users lack the time or talent to delve into this data to make informed decisions. With all that Jup has to offer (and will increasingly offer as GUM becomes a reality), human-readable charts and data narratives become more important as a fairly-distributed source of knowledge.

Resources & Prioritization

Multiple WGs and community members have expressed ad hoc interest in accessing a data scientist to support initiatives and content (e.g. ecosystem benchmark reports, LFG candidate analytics, etc). But given the time-locked budgets of those teams and unknown outcomes of any trial group, they aren’t currently in a position to bring on dedicated data science resources. As such, it follows that an independent resource could be fruitful across the Jup community, using its analytics focus to take on data tasks and poll the community for the most desirable reports & insights to research.

Solution

AWG pairs Jupiter’s massive platform with broader blockchain exploration to build benchmarks, behavioral trends, and other insights that inform the Jup community & crypto industry at large. Launching a trial WG focused on data-driven narratives will allow the Jup community, WGs, and media to pour their curiosity into a dedicated resource, where the outputs can ultimately expose patterns for what data projects & stories are most impactful.

Goals

• Use data narratives to extend the reach & reputation of Jupiter into other chains and non-crypto audiences, strategically dovetailing into the Uplink WG’s content proposal
• Make Jupiter one of the de facto resources of data-driven Solana insights, both for users and for the media
• Flood the market with unbiased & informative crypto charts, with Jupiter credited as the source
• Give aspiring project founders and crypto investors a shared foundation to identify the patterns & potential in new ventures
• Attract big brains to Jupiter’s discord via the AWG channel, where they can drop in and brainstorm the most interesting trends & metrics in crypto
• Provide the Jup core team with a reliable gauge of in-house data science demand by end of trial

Example Deliverables

The list below offers an abridged set of deliverables, depending on bandwidth and induced demand. In most cases these deliverables will exist in multi-format, including graphics, X threads, and short-form videos.

• Weekly dashboards analyzing activity, feature usage, and new partners in the Jupiverse
• Recurring trends/roundups, e.g. “The State Of cNFT Adoption” and postmortems on ecosystem airdrops
• Data analysis support provided to other WGs as AWG scales
• Overview metrics of LFG candidates to aid in voter education & awareness
• Ad hoc current event reports, e.g. “which tokens saw the most outflow to $MOTHER?”
• Quarterly ecosystem deep-dive with long-form analysis & editorial
• Ad hoc narrative-building at the request of journalists in & outside of web3
• (Aspirational deliverable): 1 industry standard metric powered by Jup. Think TPS for blockchains or App Store rankings for wallets — a far-reaching datapoint Jup can reliably report to benchmark the performance of projects across Solana

Example Charts

Team/Role Structure

Assuming the AWG will operate as implied, there are two dedicated roles required at a minimum:

1. Strategist: conceives and develops data-driven stories
2. Marketer: generates media interest & coverage

The roles loosely estimate part-time dedication (15-25 hrs/wk) but are purely performance based.

Strategist: Jack (@jackthepine)

Background:

• 3+ years in Web3 data analytics, including founding Pine Analytics, working in the Jupiter Web Working Group, serving as a core contributor at Metrics DAO, and serving as a Flipside Crypto Ambassador. Worked with 30+ projects across most major blockchain ecosystems. Achieved top-ranking submissions in 5 categories during the Solana Scribes Hackathon.

Responsibilities:

• Spot behavioral trends and interesting data comparisons well ahead of the curve
• Develop data narratives as charts & reports the casual user can interpret
• Build relationships with Jup leaders and partner protocols to develop narrative opportunities
• Maintain intimate knowledge of the Jup product suite
• Maintain working knowledge of the Top 50 Solana protocols (reference the “Explore Dapps” section of https://welcome.jup.ag)

Marketer: Blasfermi (@blasfermilurks)

Background:

• 15yrs leading content & comms in Web2 / startups, including pitch decks & grant submissions that raised $7MM+ from VCs & interest groups. De facto Head of Communications and Head of People in seed-stage companies. Direct experience launching industry insights projects in ad tech, ecomm, and AI. Member of the Crypto Communications Collective.

Responsibilities:

• Pitch story to external audiences (media outlets, investors, influencers)
• Manage publishing process between AWG/Jup team and media outlets
• Create & collaborate on repeatable content & media workflows with other WGs
• Recruit & manage media contractors to fast-track story exposure

Contractors

Media contractors (Public Relations freelancers & journalists) traditionally act as gatekeepers to publicity, and are familiar with pay-for-performance models when first establishing relationships with an information source. We have earmarked a line item in the budget to develop these relationships.

Operating Budget: $26,250

• Salaries: $20,250 USDC (Strategist: $4,000/mo, Marketer: $2,750/mo)
• Media Contractors: $3,000 USDC (any unused portion of the purse after the trial period will be returned to the DAO)
• Data Tool Expenses: $3,000 USDC (any unused portion of the purse after the trial period will be returned to the DAO)
• Total Trial Period Budget: $26,250

Challenges & Risks

• We originally drafted this proposal before the community was made aware of Jup’s upcoming grants program (and before the Uplink WG proposed its budget for community content creators). In light of those recent developments, we are very much open to reassessing the most effective mechanism to generate the solution we’ve described. Specifically on the marketing side, it sounds as if grant/bounty opportunities may have more impact with less commitment than a fixed role inside a WG. The counterpoint in favor of WGs is that there tends to be more strategic work developed & delivered over time with dedicated personnel.
• Establishing trust between Jupiter’s data and major media outlets will take time, so a 3-month WG trial might not produce impactful coverage in non-crypto publications during that window. And, by the operating nature of some publications (e.g. TechCrunch), the publishing process alone can take up to 12 weeks due to their editorial calendar. This issue may imply that grants (rather than a formal WG) may be more impactful for the Marketer’s role here, though it must be noted that Public Relations marketers typically do not favor pay-for-performance given how much labor goes into the pre-publication process, so the broader issue may be a question of how flexible the grant opportunities are.
• High likelihood of induced demand (demand growth as a direct result of increased supply) for metrics & analysis from the Jup community may require the queuing of priorities and/or additional resources. This should not be a problem but is worth noting as it is the typical pattern in organizations when access to data research becomes available.

[AG42]

I’ve been thoroughly enjoying your findings for a couple of months already. In terms of possible applications, properly presented blockchain data re LFG candidates would be of great help to the community during the votes, and this is where I see most value for myself, as a voter. I also agree that other WG’s could also find quite a few uses for your work (I can easily imagine use cases for CWG, RWG, WWG, and Uplink).
Making Jupiter a de-facto source of reliable analytics for the whole Solana ecosystem is also a very important point. It brings eyes, authority, and ultimately involvement. I know it very well from one of my previous web2 jobs, where at least half of our success was built on unbiased ecosystem analytics, which was appreciated and promoted both by community members and the platform itself. Also, this is an advantage that is pretty hard to be stolen by competition, once gained.

I think that the format of involvement needs to be discussed more thoroughly:

1. This proposed WG is probably not as typical and straight-forward in terms of growing the pie compared to previous ones (even though it’s more than valuable to the DAO). In my opinion, more detailed explanations on this front would help the community to fully understand the value it brings.
2. As far as I know the grants system is yet to be finalized by Meow, so we’d need to wait until then (or not).

[blasfermi]

@AG42

where at least half of our success was built on unbiased ecosystem analytics

Love to hear it, I’ve had the same experience at two companies! Agree that it’s a highly resilient market advantage once it starts gaining legit traction.

Re: feedback on the format & involvement, great takes . This is in large part why we’re putting the proposal out here in draft form. It seems like a great practical example for debating what WGs should do vs. what grants (or bounties / satellite creators) should do, since the CWG & core team are still fleshing out grants as you mentioned.

Timeline-wise, one thing that was nicely said in the 6/17 Office Hours discussion was that even if grants take a couple months to launch, that wouldn’t push productivity too far past the normal amount of time it takes to get a formal WG up and running. So there’s that to consider.

[SOLseeker]

Hi future AWG team,

I couldn’t help but attempt to pre-throw my hat in the ring for this possible Media Contractor opportunity referenced in your proposal.

I’ve been into crypto for 5+ year and in the crypto trenches since the end of the last bull and through depths of the bear market - Always in the Solana ecosystem, mostly ME and NFTs. That experience, combined with my obsession for data analytics, Prob/Stat & social media marketing content & strategies, would make me your ideal candidate. I’ve got a talent for turning complex data into stories that resonate, and the social media marketing ability to ensure those narratives reach the right audiences.

And as a literal day one $JUP maxi, I’ve got my finger on the pulse of this ecosystem. I’m ready to leverage my unique blend of near unhealthy obsession with web3/crypto, data-driven insights & marketing savvy to catapult Jupiter beyond Solana & into the broader crypto/financial ecosystems.

Let’s turn Jupiter’s data into the industry’s most sought-after insights.

Thank You,
Zach [@zbailey83 - SOLseeker]

[antimatter]

Very happy to see the AWG proposal get released.

Jack has been a great asset for the WWG during our trial period, producing fantastic dashboards for WG and LFG votes.

Cant wait to see the AWG cook!

[AG42]

Wish I didn’t miss the Monday Office Hours. It would be great if you could do a few cat-cafe voice sessions, if you’re comfortable with that. Also, @wake and @SaxWEB3 are currently collecting guest applications for their podcast, and I think that it would also be a great starting point in terms of the WG candidate campaigning. Again, my opinion is, that this initiative would help us grow further as a recognized community in the space. I am concerned that it could be just me, because of my life/work experience, so spreading the message and explaining the goals of AWG could be helpful imo.

[blasfermi]

Much appreciated! I’ll add you to my list of contacts to loop in (feel free to DM me @blasfermi in discord)

[SOLseeker]

Sounds like a plan, TY fren!JUP4JUP

[Rapid]

This is a great proposal, particularly the plan to reach audiences through media.

I’ve been advocating the need to focus attention on onboarding normies with real-life examples of financially positive activity on the Jupiter platform. This would be greatly aided with easily comprehensible analytics.

Best of luck to you.

[lochie2001]

This is a well written proposal. Hopefully the team look into it

[eycof]

Giving Jup Stakers a purchase right for LFG rounds would strengthen the Jup stake. As it is, we can’t be involved in the launch pads.

[loothore907]

Hi! Thanks for that awesome proposal.

You did a great job articulating the problems and then proposing a comprehensive solution with strong, result-oriented goals. You were clear and concise with your points and i really couldn’t find fault with either your concept or your solutions.

erm…

Having said that, this is a draft, correct? so it’s about feedback and nailing it. the following is critical but is not intended in any way to be hostile. I fully support the idea and the proposal, when/if it comes to vote. I just want it to be the best it can, so am offering feedback to that effect.

The proposal contains very few details on exactly what data you are going to be utilizing, where you are going to get it, how you are going to process it, where are you going to store it, and finally, how are you going to secure that data in a way that will provide a decentralized, transparent methodology that traditional media sources can trust while maintaining web3 standards and practices?

And your gonna pay for that with er…three grand?

It seems to me that the infrastructure required to effectively achieve your goals has not been successfully articulated within this proposal

• What specific metrics are you planning on tracking?
• Where do you plan on obtaining the required datasets? You mentioned blockchain data in the proposal, Do you plan on leveraging any web2 APIs?
• How are you going to analyze those metrics? What types of algorithms will you leverage for this?
• What about storage and hosting? decentralized or not? Would definitely be good to know.
• What about your actual database(s)? Vector? Graph? Both? Neither? lol
• Trust is mentioned. How exactly do you plan on selling traditional media on the idea that we are a trusted data source? (the idea is to see a Jupiter graph on USA Today, right?). Does this just mean data security? or is it just about packaging? What exactly is the infiltration plan there? I would love to know.

Let’s talk about cost for a second.

It seems to me that $3,000 USD is not going to be enough for your infrastructure needs. Though in fairness, that cost will depend on lots of things. but i think API access could be a significant cost. We could crawl the blockchains easily enough, and there are platforms that you can sub to i think…though i’m not sure on cost…or statistical relevance if used alone. That means social media access? to link the two?
Twitter, Youtube, Reddit, Telegram, Medium, Instagram…frickin Tik Tok, who knows where the conversation will migrate next. There are free datasets out there, and ways to collect our own without erm…well as we want this process to be verifiably legit, we will need legal access to APIs for data collection. Probably historical data as well? We could start fresh with all data points, but how long until it’s useful?

Sooooo…Assuming any of the above paragraph is correct, that means the Pro API access for Twitter.
5k per month.

Shit. I think i should have put a TLDR at the beginning of this reply…sorry bro.

I don’t know if you can tell, but i have a keen interest in processes just like this. I’m actually working on a project that aims to semantically track engagement metrics across social media platforms…well that’s a part of it, anyways. While i don’t have any intact workflows to offer, i have done lots of conceptual work on the processes.
I’m currently working on synthesizing engagement data for AI training because i hit a big cost wall when it came to data collection.

God let me end this before i start on something else. Sorry for the length and incoherence, but I’d love to see some of these issues addressed in your final proposal, and hope this post has some value for you.
Great Job!

[blasfermi]

@loothore907

God let me end this before i start on something else

hahaha, I feel you homie — and absolutely, this is a draft and all your feedback is highly constructive, it’s appreciated! I can see where we glossed over some of the tech stack & implementation aspects a bit presumptively.

I’ll let Jack provide more detail here but for the sake of getting the AWG cranking during the short (90-day) trial window, I think most of what gets churned out would be via featherweight infrastructure, e.g. querying the chain via Dune and Flipside. You can see a lot of that in Jack’s twitter content. So at least during trial, that’s where a lot of the low overhead is coming from.

As to digging deeper infra roots with Jup’s own internal data, or executions that allow the media & masses to open the hood on a dashboard and see where the data comes from, etc… agreed that’s a discussion we need to have in more detail.

Re: building trust with media outlets, my POV based on experience in emerging industries is that you’re often sitting pretty if you’re one of the early data-driven resources to establish a relationship with reporters, toss them opportunities to make their job easier, and make yourself available to give them what they need (e.g. they want to do a piece on what “liquid staking” is, and ask us if we can make them a chart that depicts the growth of LST activity on Solana, and we happily deliver). Web3 thankfully is already very transparent from a data standpoint, which in turn makes it easier to trust any internal Jup data peppered into all those broader blockchain insights… so we benefit from that. TLDR, yes I would say it’s mostly about packaging, of which the majority workload is relationship-building.

There is of course the other marketing arm of media, which is owned content channels (e.g. Twitter, YouTube)… and the primary work to be done there is audience-building. But that’s where the AWG would be more like a firehose of content assisting the Uplink WG and WWG and Reddit WG who are tasked with such growth.

We’ll aim to get on a call next week so by all means, touch on more of these topics there!

[MeowZe]

Great proposal. Trading data especially on higher timeframes is also lacking on jup. Things like liquidation heat maps, fear and greed indexes, and volume are poorly integrated in defi and would be great to see rolled into this effort! The heatmap especially is an often seearched chart that for whatever reason is outside most defi trading platforms. Trading analytics aside, this effort ahould not be underestimated and is probably the easiest way to attract eyeballs through google searches and social media. Charts and analytics are highly reposted and should be seens as high priority content creation.

[_Jack]

Thank you for bringing this up. We were not planning to use any Web 2 APIs for this project. Instead, our plan was to utilize blockchain data from Flipside Crypto and potentially Dune. It might be a good idea to increase the budget by $600 so we can use Flipside Pro rather than the mid-tier option for 3 months, which would allow us to store tables of the data we create.

All the queries we build out will be open-source and forkable. We also plan on tracking data relevant to the internal Jupiter community, such as LFG voting metrics, by gathering and organizing data requests from working groups and the community. Additionally, we will be obtaining metrics that are broadly relevant to Jupiter and their partners, covering topics such as the RWA market overview and more sensational subjects like memecoin volume. These broader metrics aim to reach a much larger group of people compared to the niche information.

We are open to hearing why other APIs might improve the information we are providing, but we believe on-chain data is sufficient for our needs.

[Rapid]

@_Jack

We also plan on tracking data relevant to the internal Jupiter community, such as LFG voting metrics, by gathering and organizing data requests from working groups and the community.

Can I ask why you would do these two things? For what purpose? Thanks.

[BlueZenith]

Looking forward to seeing this implemented ASAP.

Still can’t decide if it would be better served as a WG vs. a grant proposal. Guess that’s up to the potential members.

Hope the CWG gets a grant framework in place soon.

[blasfermi]

Thoughts re: our decision to focus on Grants instead of the AWG

While the Grants program is still in early development as of today, a few distinguishing points seemed fairly clear thanks to ongoing discussion with the existing Working Groups:

• Labor Commitment: full-time commitment is strongly recommended when proposing a WG. Neither Jack nor I were eager to make that lifestyle shift at this time (F/T also would have complicated the funding discussion, as both of us offered friendly compensation rates in exchange for limiting the labor to P/T.) Grants, by comparison, offer much lower commitment and clearer ROI for JupDAO to evaluate.
• Time To Value (TTV): as noted in Risks & Challenges, the vision to draw in audiences beyond Solana (i.e. BTC/ETH & non-crypto media outlets) could easily take 90+ days to reach an objectively “successful” state. This is asking a lot from both the AWG and JupDAO. Focusing on Grants absolves both parties of taking that leap of faith, while still creating the opportunity for us (or anyone in JupDAO) to run with a data-driven narrative and prove out the value of reaching those larger audiences.
• Strategic Direction: while some of the vision & goals laid out in this proposal will likely falter without a committed working group at the helm, JupDAO’s significant support for the AWG’s broad objective implies there are many forms this work can take to grow the pie. Grants could make up for the lack of managed direction by providing a wider array of ideas and opening up collaboration to more community members.

[wake]

Hi Jack and Blasfermi,

We’re interested in showcasing your proposal and would love to have you on the JUP and Juice podcast to discuss it!

If you’re interested, reach out to “saxweb3” (devID: 1259981124030173216) or “wake5” (devID: 127776013848412160) on Discord.

Or DM “saxweb3” or “wakegmi” on X.

(Please ensure you use the correct contact information, double check devIDs and twitter handle spelling, don’t get scammed. We will never ask for money, seed phrases or private information).

Alternatively you can fill out this form on Jup Eco: https://ve.jup.eco/form

Look forward to hearing from you,

JUP and Juice Podcast