Today, my team at Covalent is proud to announce the introduction of Covalent Research to the world. Covalent Research is the first of its kind to provide independent, unbiased industry research on various blockchain projects and crypto-tokens. Our agenda is to use data to tell you what you need to pay attention to and what you can ignore.
What problem are we solving?
In 2018, I can finally talk about "Bitcoin" and "Ethereum" without getting blank stares. Just like the Internet revolutionized society 20 years ago, blockchain technologies have the massive potential to impact industries ranging from finance to retail to insurance and government.
Thus far, cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum have resonated with mainstream users. Billions of dollars have been raised through ICOs (Initial Coin Offerings) and the various cryptocurrencies that have had massive price rallies in 2017.
As with any emerging industry, crypto has attracted both aspiring entrepreneurs working on world-changing ideas as well as fraudsters out for a quick buck. Without data, it’s difficult to know what to pay attention to and what to ignore.
Although cryptocurrencies have captured all of the mindshare, the bigger opportunity, in my opinion, is with blockchains with its decentralized architecture, immutable ledger and highly secure framework.
But today, there are several major technical challenges that make them impractical for mainstream adoption. Aside from the technical challenges, we need the right frameworks to identify opportunities with real use-cases.
When people ask, "What is blockchain," they are really asking, "why do I need to care about it and how does it matter?"
Understanding the activity on a blockchain shouldn't involve downloading hundreds of gigabytes of data, complex code, or a PhD in statistics. Instead, we give you research written for the layperson in plain English by our in-house team, backed by our proprietary algorithms and data.
That's the problem we're attempting to solve.
Covalent is #Data, #Talent and #Algorithms
As the saying goes, good things come in threes. Covalent is really three parts:
- Data
- Talent
- Algorithms
Covalent's data, talent and algorithms are the perfect trifecta. They reinforce each other through feedback loops in a virtuous circle.
1. Data
Our proprietary data pipeline combines on-chain data from blockchains like Ethereum and the various Bitcoin forks with off-chain data from a variety of data sources. We are sitting on hundreds of millions of transactions that is growing rapidly every day. On average, Ethereum generates new blocks every 15-30 seconds while Bitcoin generates new blocks every 10 minutes.
It's taken us a year of relentless hard work to get the data we want, in a format we want. Over the upcoming weeks, we'll be writing and speaking about some of the engineering and scaling challenges we've had to overcome to make this possible.
2. Talent
Secondly, our team of data scientists and financial analysts are some of the smartest people I've worked with in my career. When our team met for the first time one fine day at the beginning of summer, we were looking at a blank slate. Since then, we've iterated on our research methodology, and our data and research offerings that I'm confident is the most compelling package available today on the market.
Our package includes webinars, slide decks, data sheets and blog posts – these are free. If you want to go further, you can purchase one of our research reports that come with additional perks and direct access to our analysts.
3. Algorithms
The third is our suite of algorithms that we use to sift through the mountains of data. Our algorithms surface insights on two levels:
Level 1 data for smart contract transaction counts, token velocity and adoption rates. As our research is written in plain English, we've had to come up with a set of metrics that is intuitive for the layperson. This is real utility data that comes off the blockchain.
Level 2 data for industry-specific benchmarks. Our research is always against the backdrop of a traditional sector for context. For example, for the decentralized peer-to-peer lending space, we report on default rates, maturity terms and return rates for investors. These metrics are familiar to investors who've traditionally invested in peer-to-peer lending companies like SoFi and LendingClub.
What's available today and what's upcoming?
Our goal is to have ten research reports and their corresponding webinars, slide decks and data sheets available by the end of the year. Yes, you read that right – ten complete reports chock full of data, charts and infographics.
Every report includes:
- Market needs and who the traditional players are
- What decentralization brings to the table
- Top players on the blockchain
- Market sizing and sector ranking
- SWOT analysis
- Webinars and slide decks summarizing the report
Available today
- Decentralized Credit and Lending
- Decentralized File Storage and Sharing
- Decentralized Cloud Computing
Available Nov 30, 2018
- Decentralized Social Media
- Decentralized Privacy and Identity
- Decentralized Digital Currency Exchanges
- Decentralized Advertising
Available Dec 30, 2018
- Decentralized Sports Betting and Gambling
- Decentralized Digital Rights Management
- Decentralized Supply Chain Management
Customer Quotes
“ With so many projects in the Blockchain space, I highly recommend using Covalent to save your team hours and hours of work.
Kara Zucker, Head of Operations at Blockchain Assembly
“ The team at Covalent Research are leading the deep research into the challenges of traditional industries to expose the opportunities; while helping improve the knowledge gap between technical engineers and keen early adopters.
Alex Benjamin, CEO at Lendful
How to get started
Simply head to our Covalent Research homepage to see what we're about, or browse through our research hub.