Messari Daily Brief Feb 26, 2021: Training 100+ Analysts

Last summer, we opened up the Messari community analyst program to new applicants for the first time since 2018. We’ve scaled considerably since then, and our contributors have been a hit. So we're planning to expand the program in 2021. We just invited the next cohort of analysts, and will be accepting contributors on a rolling basis from now on.

You can find the community analyst program overview here, along with an application form.

To refresh your memory, the first order of business at Messari was a call to action for "a small army of volunteer analyst contributors / collaborators who will work with Messari on cryptoasset research and analysis as we boot up the industry’s “EDGAR" database.” We promised to hire the best contributors full-time as our lead analysts, and help to place the rest. Ryan Watkins, Jack Purdy, and Mason Nystrom are three of those community-turned-full-time analysts who have done particularly well.

We doubled down on the program last summer by defining what great analysts look like: humble (pay your dues), hungry (produce relentlessly even when payouts are unclear), long-term oriented (willing to invest time for elevated status vs. cash comp), and loyal (that goes both ways! our community diaspora extends to crypto companies like Coinbase, ConsenSys, and Eco; news / researchers like CoinDesk, The Block, and Delphi; funds like Grayscale, Multicoin, and Framework Ventures; and token projects like Solana).

I’m excited to train and place the next 100 analysts through this program. There’s still much to be done to slash information asymmetries across the industry, and our community is one of the most powerful assets we have to accomplish that goal.

Headlines that matter:

• INTEL: Cosmos, Stacks, PERP, ETH, Tezos, EOS, BNB, SOL, Celo (+ 20 updates)
• Must read: Messari’s Polkadot Primer from Mira and Wilson (Messari)
• Benchmark, Accel invest $50 million in digital collectibles platform Sorare (CoinDesk)
• Kraken negotiating fundraise at $10 billion valuation (CoinDesk)
• CoinGecko founder AMA notes
• Digital Artist Beeple's 5000-Day collection fetching $1.8 million (The Block)
• 1inch the latest to move to Binance Smart Chain amidst high gas fees (CoinDesk)
• Grayscale announces the future candidates for its investment trusts (Grayscale)
• JPMorgan says investors could add 1% of BTC to their portfolios (Bloomberg)
• Daily Shade: So much Binance shade in the Coinbase S-1!