Ganesh Swamy, CEO of blockchain data aggregator Covalent, says there is still an “intense demand” for on-chain data analysts, which has yet to be met.
Speaking to Cointelegraph, Swami said that analysts are in “intense demand” because there is a “real need” for data experts to “understand” on-chain data, explaining:
“There is an unresolved backlog of unfilled data-driven roles. This order is a testament to how keen blockchain and non-blockchain companies alike are to understand their own on-chain data and that of competitors.”
Swami explained that while the demand for on-chain data analysts has yet to outpace their Web2 counterpart, the growth in the use of stablecoins, lending, and decentralized finance (DeFi) products over the past 18 months has fueled demand for the job title.
Similar to data analysts in traditional industries, Swami said, on-chain data analysts can expect to analyze a company’s “reach, retention, and revenue” metrics, except, in this case, the on-chain intelligence will be found across multiple blockchains.
For example, in the case of an NFT project, Swami explained that “reach” would look at “how many people mint your tokens” and “retention” would correlate with “the average holding period of those tokens” which is important for Know whether investors are using these “quick swings” or “holding on to them” for the long term.
He explained that “revenue” relates to sales — blockchain analysts can determine whether sales are “concentrated through a handful of sales or spread across multiple batches.”
But the role is not there. Swami said that to “make better protocols and better serve users,” on-chain analysts can “target users for marketing or user acquisition purposes” by reviewing what happened on competitors’ protocols, as the blockchain leaves what Swami likes to call “historic breadcrumbs.”
Swami also predicted that “Web3 data will overtake Web2 data” at some point in the next 20 to 30 years, and that Web3 data analytics “will be much larger than the current business intelligence market, which is currently worth hundreds of billions of dollars.”
To address the current shortage of on-chain analysts, Covalent is set to launch a four-week “Data Alchemist Boot-Camp” on October 19, which aims to train more than 1,000 individuals in on-chain analytics.
“The only prerequisite for joining a data chemist boot camp is a desire to learn about Web3; come with that, and we’ll pay you to learn,” Swami said.
Related: Six Helpful Tips for Web3 Companies Looking for the Best Data Analysts
However, Swami said that in the near term, on-chain analysts are likely to find more job opportunities in Web2 companies entering Web3, rather than in the original Web3 projects themselves:
“It would be faster and better for a Web2 company with hundreds of millions of players or users to add Web3 experiences, and what we can see, right away what we have is the field of view of the Web2 business, adding a Web3 experience.”
“Companies like Adidas and Samsung now have divisions of metaverse data scientists and analysts to service dashboards and manage metrics,” he added.
