Messari's Polkadot 'Ecosystem Overview' Report

Ecosystem
1

Hello all,

As some of you will doubtless know, Messari has successfully applied for Treasury Funding to write quarterly reports about Polkadot. These have improved in quality gradually over the last year, but I appreciate that concerns remain, principally around the following issues:

  1. Does the data shown reflect the ecosystem powerfully enough as a whole or is it too reliant on Relay Chain numbers?
  2. Do the writers show enough understanding about core Polkadot concepts, such as XCM, blockspace, the function of the Treasury and OpenGov?
  3. How “useful” are the Messari reports in helping extend awareness of Polkadot outside the walled garden/echo chamber of the existing ecosystem?

To that end, I thought it might be useful to share an early outline Messari have shared with myself and the data team about what they intend to include in the end-of-year extended ecosystem round-up, which will go into more detail than the usual quarterly reports and can extend beyond pure data to incorporate technical upgrades, a future roadmap and so on.

So here’s what Messari sent us about how they propose to write up their Polkadot 2023 deepdive:

Polkadot Ecosystem Overview Report

Introduction

A primer on Polkadot including technical, relay chain, historical, team, and other details.
A primer on parachains including the technicals, auctions history, XCM, and recent developments.

Parachains

Note → The buckets and their allocations are subject to change.
Note → I will include sub-sectors. For example, within Financial I will include DEXs, Hubs, RWAs, Cross-Chain, BTC, etc.
Financial: Acala, Parallel, Clover, Composable, Centrifuge, Interlay, Hydra, Equilibrium, Polkadex, Bifrost, Coinversation, OAK, Omni, Pendulum
Gaming and NFTs: Efinity, Unique, Ajuna, Moonsama, Bit Country,
Infrastructure: Moonbeam, Astar, Nodle, Phala, Litentry, Origin Trail, Totem, Kylin, Integritee, Aventus, Crust, Bittensor, Manta, Aleph, Subsocial, Frequency, Hashed, T3rn, peaq, Energy Web, InvArch, Polimec

Roadmap, XCM, future auction model, blockspace, etc.

Data Request

Usage metrics: Active addresses, new addresses, returning addresses, successful transactions, unsuccessful transactions, XCM messages, active contracts, etc.

DeFi metrics: TVL, volume, borrows, stablecoins, etc.

NFTs and gaming: NFT buyers, NFT sellers, NFT trading volume, NFT mints, etc.

How does this look to you? What else should Messari be examining? What are the key Polkadot stories/technical upgrades/positive developments of 2023? Which parachains are killing it and why?

I should add here that I am indebted to @pavla @Karim and the rest of the hard-working Parity data team in having given up a considerable amount of time to help Messari up to now, particularly with the recent Q3 data. They will also be reaching out separately on the subject of a Parity-led ecosystem overview - and will also be seeking some helpful feedback from you wonderful ecosystem folk!

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I think the debate is:
Do we need to fund Messari AND Dot Insights ?

Dot Insights has proven their reports where at least the same quality as the Messari’s reports, and even probably better now.

Messari does not even even include Polkadot when they share ecosystems comparisons between L0/L1 chains about interoperability, like if Polkadot didn’t even exist.

The community, through the Subwallet team delivering the Dot Insights reports, proved that decentralization had beaten Messari with more quality at a fewer cost.

Messari is just a name.
So does it worth the price we pay just for the name of it ?

I don’t feel they respect Polkadot the way we would deserve it.

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Thank’s for the reply, Thomas. Clearly if they are looking to secure future work it will need to go through another successful Treasury Proposal so the community can decide on future value but for the purposes of NOW we are just trying to get the maximum bang for our buck for reports that are already paid for.

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Understood ! So yeah it makes sense to give them better data to display.

So Goku already added some thoughts abbout it in his thread here

Financial: Acala, Parallel, Clover, Composable, Centrifuge, Interlay, Hydra, Equilibrium, Polkadex, Bifrost, Coinversation, OAK, Omni, Pendulum

→ Coinversation is dead
→ I don’t think ‘Financial’ is the good term here (simply ‘Defi’ maybe)

Composable is probably more on the Infra side because they are building IBC trustless bridges before anything else.

Infrastructure: Moonbeam, Astar, Nodle, Phala, Litentry, Origin Trail, Totem, Kylin, Integritee, Aventus, Crust, Bittensor, Manta, Aleph, Subsocial, Frequency, Hashed, T3rn, peaq, Energy Web, InvArch, Polimec

→ gathers GameFi, SocialFi, IoT, crowdfunding, Energy, Accounting so ‘Infra’ term looks weird too. I mean Polkadot is the Infra.

What else should Messari be examining?

Mythical moving from Ethereum to Polkadot

Usage metrics: Active addresses, new addresses, returning addresses, successful transactions, unsuccessful transactions, XCM messages, active contracts, etc.

XCM in and out for main chains.

Which parachains are killing it and why?

Bifrost.
Why ? Only organic growth since the beginning. It was not seen as the super App like Acala but made it through the Bear by continuous building strategy, delivering new use cases for users.

vDOT = 1st LST to retain gov rights for #OpenGov
vDOT = 1st LST to be present in 5 different parachains: Bifrost, Interlay, HydraDX, Moonbeam and Astar
vDOT = 1st LST to use XCMv3 for x-chain interactions (see https://omni.ls) and HydraDX Treasury minting vDOT through XCM
Team always active and building on top of the Polkadot infra. They are showcasing the purpose of Polkadot, connecting securely different heterogenous chains with standardized LSTs.
Bifrost has LSTs on Ethereum (since 2020), Polkadot/Kusama and Filecoin !

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Thanks for this - that historic tweet from Goku regarding Polkadot being omitted from the decentralization thread Messari pumped out is a very good example of the “second-class status” Messari seems to accord to Polkadot which is frustrating and I will certainly highlight this.

As for the stuff around parachain classification, don’t worry - I have gone through all of them, added the ones that were left out and reclassified everything appropriately.

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Maybe adding a section on OpenGov would be interesting. I remember that the package the Messari proposed has a Governance deep-dive report too, do you know if they’re still doing it?

Also it’s worth highlighting that the crowdloan unlock had no major effect on the ecosystem; if anything, the stake grew significantly for both native and LSD.

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Well remembered, DJ! Yes, so the order of reports will be as follows:

  1. Polkadot Q4 round-up (early Jan)
  2. Polkadot Ecosystem Overview (likely mid-Jan)
  3. Governance Deep-Dive (poss. late Jan)

Messari confirmed this schedule on their call with us last week. It might be an idea to tease the OpenGov report within the Ecosystem one - so will suggest that.

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There’s still some caché in a report from Messari, more in its comprehensiveness than objectiveness of data or specificity. IMO it’s still worthwhile, if only for Polkadot to continue to be included in the conversation. That said, I hope they’re giving their best bear market pricing because when I last spoke to them they were still demanding crazy premiums.

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I think DFG‘s Polkadot report should also be considered and funded, as an active Polkadot VC. Here are some examples:

DFG 2023 H1 Polkadot Report
Polkadot OpenGov Overview
2022 Annual Polkadot Report

The reports are free with better quality and deeper thoughts than Messari, even Dot Insights. From my perspective, reports of Dot Insights are prettier but less of an analysis than DFG. Anyway, they both involved a lot of work.