On June 25th, Rocktree joined forces with Covalent to host a Space themed “Harnessing Covalent’s Billions of Data Points for AI Growth,” featuring Mandy from Odaily Planet as the moderator. Odaily Planet highlighted Covalent’s recent milestones and industry experts, delving into Covalent’s data ecosystem.
The interview content compiled by Odaily Planet follows:
Odaily Planet: Could you briefly introduce Covalent? Covalent has reached 100 billion blockchain transaction parses to ensure AI integrity and verifiable long-term data availability. How does Covalent safeguard against bias and data manipulation in AI models, and what key role does Covalent play in Web3+AI?
Ganesh Swami: Covalent serves as the home for Web3 data, specifically as the largest indexer in the Web3 space. “Indexing” involves fetching blockchain data, structuring it for future accessibility, and storing it in a user-friendly manner.
Covalent currently indexes approximately 225 blockchains, providing developers with this data via APIs and analysts through our Increment (dashboard/analytics) and GoldRush (block explorer toolkit) products. These value-added services are free, with revenue flowing back into the Covalent network through stakers and node operators.
Blockchain transactions and other network protocol data are inherently “unstructured,” requiring additional steps to clean, organize, and categorize for enhanced accessibility, readability, and usability by developers and end-users. This is the essence of “indexing.”
Comparing to the structure of today’s Internet (Web2), where a few protocols define information transmission, storage, and security, Covalent acts similarly but in a decentralized manner, safeguarding and structuring Web3 data. It functions as a secure data pipeline, connecting unstructured receipts of transactions from over 230 blockchains and any desired databases. At each step, operators on the Covalent network ensure data source and quality, backed by proof of their work through token staking. This coordinated effort, incentivized by CQT tokens, results in the largest structured long-term data reservoir in Web3, enabling significant innovation and industry applications dependent on high-quality indexed data.
AI models are highly sensitive to their inputs (training data). Data must be pre-cleaned and structured into appropriate formats, requiring substantial volumes of data. This explains Covalent’s popularity among developers building AI and crypto applications.
Odaily Planet: Covalent made significant strides in the first and second quarters of 2024. Could you share these accomplishments? What major milestones can we expect for CQT in the third quarter?
Ganesh Swami: In the first half of this year, Covalent achieved numerous milestones:
– We launched the GoldRush Kit, a modular block explorer toolkit allowing anyone to create their own block explorer on any chain indexed by Covalent, with customizable UI components.
– We continued to serve thousands of clients, including major Wall Street and financial institutions like Fidelity and EY, as well as crypto-native groups like Consensys and Rainbow Wallet, who access and utilize our data for business insights and innovations, tapping into 59 TB of data from 8.8 billion transactions on the Covalent network since inception.
– We redistributed previous off-chain demand-side revenue through a community staker reward system, complementing our token buyback program. This ongoing initiative helps control supply and creates a network flywheel, effectively supporting the network with fiat income.
– We significantly improved Covalent’s unified API and possess the most robust and straightforward means for creating data inputs useful to innovators and builders.
– We launched on the QuickNode marketplace and announced partnerships with Infura/Microsoft/Tencent on Decentralized Infrastructure Networks (DIN), consolidating key players to advance the DePIN industry collectively.
– We successfully migrated staking contracts from Moonbeam to Ethereum, simplifying participation for network stakeholders, eliminating risks associated with bridging, and increasing staking engagement from 11% to nearly 20%.
– With this migration, we introduced new node operators Thunderhead, Corthos Capital, and Restake, with additional prospective operators joining in the coming weeks.
– We announced partnerships with Cronos zkEVM, Celo, Gnosis Chain, Movement, MELD, Taiko, Optimism, Berachain, Sei EVM, OKX’s X1, Blast, Xai, ApeChain, and several other projects.
– Arthur Hayes joined us as an advisor to accelerate our global growth.
– We initiated an ecosystem airdrop program starting with Wormhole and just announced collaborations with Taiko and zkSync, with more airdrops planned for CQT stakers this year. This marks significant progress as many of our ecosystem partners are also coming online.
– We support over 300 million wallets across 230+ chains, underpinned by Covalent data—a monumental metric and achievement.
Looking ahead in the remaining year, we have much to anticipate:
– We have teased a new Covalent vision update, eagerly awaiting its full release, so stay tuned to our updates on X and community channels.
– We are soon launching Covalent’s Ethereum Time Machine (ETM), leveraging Covalent network to build a long-term data availability solution to address current deficiencies in the market where other DA projects maintain blockchain data for only 14-18 days! We are truly becoming the primary resource for all of Web3, with unstoppable data growth.
– We are decentralizing Covalent network’s query node components and introducing multiple new operators (suitable for all roles)—this means broader community participation in the network.
– We are deepening collaboration at the intersection of Web3 and AI, partnering with numerous projects leveraging Covalent for AI training and high-quality algorithms.
– We are launching the New Dawn Plan, one of our largest and most ambitious plans this year, encompassing numerous growth initiatives and methods to make the network more autonomous.
– We are expanding liquidity across multiple platforms (CeFi and DeFi) and regions to support community growth and bring access to the network.
We are pleased with the continuous growth of our core team, recently bolstering our marketing department with three new hires, including a focus on the Asia-Pacific region to facilitate expansion in 2024.
In terms of market promotion, we have unleashed multi-regional strategic approaches through community building, product adoption, and increased influence. We understand the importance of localization as much as possible, and we are very excited about the Chinese market and broader Asian markets. People truly grasp cryptocurrency and understand its immense value and technological power, so we have created local language communities for each region.
We have introduced a new batch of strategic investors to Covalent, with new investor lists to be announced in the third quarter.
We will continue to announce more chain and dApp partnerships as always.
Odaily Planet: BitMEX’s co-founder and former CEO Arthur Hayes recently announced joining Covalent as a strategic advisor. Congratulations! How will Arthur Hayes support Covalent’s development? Why did Arthur Hayes choose Covalent?
Ganesh Swami: Covalent previously collaborated with his company on the first AI project but not the first DeFi project. He has a deep understanding of our extensive historical and real-time data. This enables him to provide more specific and effective advice to us.
Arthur is one of the clearest voices in the Web3 field, capable of articulating fundamental points. He has a large following and advocates for some of his insights, from which Covalent will benefit.
He brings vast experience and impressive achievements in the cryptocurrency field, with extensive resources to open doors that were previously closed and explore new areas of expansion.
Covalent is one of the first AI projects, but not the first DeFi project, to collaborate with his company Maelstrom. He understands the vast historical and real-time data we possess and extending its use cases for further innovation will be very interesting.
Odaily Planet: AI is an unstoppable trend. Covalent has long been in this field and naturally possesses the ability to empower AI+Web3 development. Do you think Covalent’s potential is currently underestimated? For secondary investors, is now a good time to join the community and support Covalent?
Ganesh Swami: We have been building for many years, establishing networks, expanding integrations, and attracting globally renowned enterprises as clients. Particularly over the past year, we have devised ways to ensure the network remains a primary resource in Web3, which many enterprises can rely on.
AI is becoming increasingly intriguing in Web3, and we have successfully carved out a niche in this area, building the largest structured data availability set in Web3, highly favored by AI developers and builders. We have also achieved SOC 2 certification, a significant milestone ensuring data security and integrity from end to end, valued by financial regulatory groups on Wall Street or international enterprises requiring such data certification.
Now is absolutely a good time to join the community and support the Covalent Network; we are growing rapidly, with the global community expanding continually.
Odaily Planet: Let’s talk about data and metrics. I want everyone to have the opportunity to examine the Covalent network from various angles. Could you share a few impressive metrics and data points with us?
Ganesh Swami: We now support over 230 blockchains, and over 300 million wallets are supported by Covalent-provided data. Currently, over 30,000 developers use the Covalent network to develop over 3,000 major projects cross-chain. Additionally, our social community is rapidly growing on X (formerly Twitter), Discord, and Telegram, reaching hundreds of thousands of users.
I am delighted to see our growing attention in China, where many people are interested in us. We now have 32 operators operating independently on our network.
Odaily Planet: What is the “New Dawn Plan”? What benefits do CQT holders or stakers derive from it? What significance does this hold for ecosystem development? As part of the New Dawn Plan
