Dune

Dune is a crypto data company from Oslo. It indexes blockchains into SQL tables, lets anyone query them in the browser, and publishes the results as charts and dashboards that others can fork. In crypto circles "Dune" nearly always means this company, not the Frank Herbert novel or the films.

The pieces that matter:

• Data: raw blocks and transactions, contract events decoded into readable columns, and curated cross-protocol tables, across more than 100 chains.
• DuneSQL: the query engine, a fork of Trino adapted for chain data, with native types for addresses, hashes and 256-bit integers.
• Dashboards: public by default, so a protocol's volume chart can be traced back to the query that drew it.
• API and exports: query results can be pulled into spreadsheets, apps and other sites instead of being read on dune.com.
• Dune MCP: an AI connector the company pushed in 2026 so teams can build queries and dashboards without writing SQL themselves.

Dune was founded in 2018 by Fredrik Haga, who is still CEO, and Mats Olsen. At its February 2022 Series B it reported 10,000 analysts and 100,000 pieces of analysis on the platform, and Haga said it had no plans for a token. The company has repeated that since: when its X account was hijacked in 2024 to push a fake airdrop, it stated that no Dune token or airdrop exists or is planned.

Dune bills in credits. Running a query, refreshing a dashboard, exporting data and every scheduled run all use them, and heavier queries use more. Paid plans come with a monthly allowance that resets without rollover; free accounts cannot buy extra credits.

The change announced in late August 2026 is the biggest shift in how Dune works for individuals. Until then a free account got 2,500 credits a month, enough for occasional queries. From 10 September 2026 those older free accounts can browse dashboards and charts but not execute anything that costs credits. Affected users were given a 14-day Plus trial first. Dune's stated reason is compute cost: scanning petabyte-scale chain data on demand is expensive, and it has grown as chains add throughput.

Reading public dashboards stays free. If you only follow other people's charts, nothing changes. If you used Dune to check a number yourself now and then, budget $65 a month or look at DefiLlama for protocol-level figures.

Anyone with an account can publish a dashboard, so the same protocol can have a dozen of them with different numbers. Dune shows no quality badge that separates a careful analyst from a careless one. It does show the SQL, and that is the check.

1. 01Click a chart title to open its query and read which tables it uses: decoded contract events for one protocol, or a curated cross-protocol table.
2. 02Look for filters on addresses and dates. A missing contract address, or a hard-coded start date, explains most disagreements between two dashboards.
3. 03Check who published it. A protocol's own team account or a known data team is a better starting point than an anonymous fork.
4. 04Check when it last ran. A dashboard that nobody refreshes still displays its old result.

Protocols often link their official Dune dashboard from their docs. That makes it the protocol's own number with its own choices baked in, which is useful context but not independent verification.

The 2026 moves fit together. Haga said the layoffs were about AI doing work that used to need analysts, and pointed to Dune MCP as the product that lets customers build dashboards without SQL. Tracxn had Dune at 143 staff in March 2026, so the cut was roughly 35 people. A few months later the free plan lost query access. The company is aiming at paying teams and institutions, and away from the hobbyist analysts who built much of its public dashboard library.

Dune has not raised publicly since 2022.

Dune's data catalog lists more than 100 blockchains. Ethereum and its rollups such as Arbitrum and Optimism are the deepest, with decoded contract tables for most major protocols. Solana, Bitcoin, BNB Chain and Polygon are covered too, and Dune keeps adding smaller networks; it added Tempo in April 2026.

Solana's data model differs from the EVM chains: instructions and account changes rather than contract event logs, so Solana queries use their own tables and cross-chain queries take more joins. Coverage depth also varies by chain. On a smaller network you may get raw transactions but no decoded tables for the protocol you care about.