Which Crypto Market Analytics Platform is Better?

“Expert” opinions on the crypto market and related topics are everywhere. This can create confusion for investors as they do not know who to follow when making decisions about how and when to allocate money. However, instead of relying on such opinions, you can cut out the noise and use data-driven statistics from crypto market analysis platforms to make good decisions. This guide will compare Glassnode vs Santiment, helping you choose the analytics platform that best suits you.

What is Glassnode?

Glassnode is an on-chain analysis platform that provides comprehensive and understandable statistics on the state of the crypto markets. It essentially takes abstract blockchain data and turns it into easy-to-understand information that investors, traders, researchers, and analysts can use to weigh their decisions. Glassnode provides data for 100+ digital currencies and tokens.

Here are the features that Glassnode offers:

Studio: The studio feature allows users to access a wide range of charts containing on-chain and crypto financial statistics. For example, you can find charts about Bitcoin fees, market indicators, active Bitcoin addresses and holding Bitcoin funds. You can also create custom charts through the Workbench, build and analyze your custom visualizations using the TradingView integration, and organize your preferred statistics on the customizable dashboard. Catalog: The metrics catalog, also accessible within Glassnode studio, provides a complete overview of all the metrics on the platform. Academy: Learn more about on-chain metrics and crypto financial indicators by visiting the Glassnode Academy. This feature makes it easy for users to use the platform. Insights: Visit the insights section to get weekly on-chain reports on what the analyzed data says about the state of the crypto market. Users can use these insights to make investment and trading decisions. For example, you can find out if the 2022 bear market is different from the previous ones, which stablecoins are experiencing the biggest redemptions, and if you can still make money mining Bitcoin. So, in a nutshell, the insights feature can probably answer some of your most pressing questions about the prevailing crypto market environment. API: The Glassnode API is the gateway to all live and historical cryptomarket and on-chain metrics.

How does Glassnode work?

Glassnode updates metrics in multiple resolutions, meaning the frequency at which data is updated and the time window over which metrics are aggregated. These decisions include 1 month, 1 week, 1 day, 1 hour and 10 minutes. For example, data on a 24-hour resolution has a time window of 24 hours and a 1-day frequency.

Furthermore, the metrics are timestamped in UTC, and data updates occur at predefined time intervals. To illustrate, the 1-month resolution runs once at 2:30 UTC on the first day of each month, while the 1-week resolution runs at the same time every Monday. On the other hand, the 1-day resolution runs every 10 minutes from 00:00 to 3:00 UTC, and 10-minute resolutions run every 10 minutes.

The calculation of metrics takes between 1 and 6 minutes. So, if you request data “10 minutes after the updates run”, you will get metrics with the latest data points. However, there are some exceptions. For example, it takes 30 minutes to calculate ERC20 distribution metrics.

Glassnode waits for 1 Bitcoin block confirmation before adding a block to the metric calculation. The platform is also waiting for 12 block confirmations in Ether’s case, 1 block for Bitcoin Cash and 6 block confirmations for Litecoin.

Exchange data comes from the more than 20 supported exchanges that include Binance, Coinbase, and Bitstamp, among others. Data is also categorized as on-chain and derivatives, and the platform keeps a log of new features, bug fixes and improvements.

What is Sentiment?

Santiment is a behavioral analytics platform that provides data on crowd sentiment, cryptocurrency networks, market behavior and blockchain projects. This data can help crypto investors and traders make data-driven decisions. Santiment provides data for 1,950+ digital assets across five blockchains.

Below are the features of the platform.

Sanbase: Here users can view charts on stablecoins, ETH 2.0 staking, DEXs, track their preferred digital assets, explore social trends and view developer activity by blockchain, among other things.Sansheets Plugin: You can add Sansheets to Google Sheets and start fetching Santiment -data with the wide variety of functions that the plugin offers.Academy: This is a learning platform that provides guides on how to use the platform. It also has specific educational articles for traders and developers.API: Organizations can integrate Santiment’s API with their products to access crypto market data from one place.Sangraphs: This feature provides graphs on ETH miner statistics, ETH DEX trades and MakerDAO network activity, among other data sets. Reports: Users can access weekly reports for their Sanbase watch lists and end-of-month reports containing data findings. You can also get regular insights into the crypto market.

How does Santiment work?

Santiment has several information centers such as content streams, which include regularly updated information. Content streams can be accessed through insights and reports. In addition, the platform has several data feeds. Sentiment data feeds provide social data, while blockchain data feeds provide on-chain statistics. Conversely, crowd-sourced data streams allow users to contribute information that may not have been publicly available before. Sanbase, Santiment’s crowdsourced database, provides data on more than 1,950+ digital assets.

A wide range of statistics are available on Santiment. They are categorized as financial, social, development, on-chain, derivatives and chain address metrics. The financial statistics include prices, volumes and average coin age. Social metrics focus on social data such as emerging trends and sentiments, while development metrics include developer and Github activity.

On-chain data consists of network value, network activity and other metrics such as supply distribution and transaction volume. Derived statistics deal with crypto exchange data and the stock-to-flow ratio, while chain address data covers the latest transactions and historical balances.

Santiment publishes a log of the changes it makes to the platform and combines both human and machine efforts to provide accurate data.

Glassnode vs Santiment: A Comparison

The takeaway

Both Glassnode and Santiment offer a wide range of useful data that traders, investors, researchers and analysts can use. However, Santiment goes a step further to provide social data, which is useful for anyone curious about crypto trends and general market sentiment.

The two platforms offer free and paid plans. Glassnode has the cheapest plan ($39/month) as well as the most expensive ($799/month). In contrast, Santiment’s paid plans are neither too cheap nor too expensive ($49/month and $250/month). Therefore, it all depends on what you want when comparing the two platforms based on cost.

Finally, Santiment appears to be the broader platform because it supports more assets and provides users with social data. However, you can go for Glassnode’s cheaper plan ($29/month) if you are not interested in market sentiment data.

Frequently Asked Questions