Dune Sim and Dune Analytics — on-chain analytics skill

This skill is the primary home for Dune-powered workflows in blockint: how to think, what to call when, and how to ship analytics that combine realtime Sim data with historical SQL where appropriate. It is not a thin link list—use it to structure tasks; open docs.sim.dune.com/llms.txt and openapi.json for exact parameters and auth as you implement.

Educational and integration guidance—users remain responsible for API keys, billing, and Terms.

Mental model: two engines

Engine	Best for	Typical outputs
Dune Sim	Live wallet and token state—balances, activity feeds, transactions, NFT collectibles, DeFi positions, stablecoin views, webhook subscriptions	Apps, agents, alerts, “what does this address hold / do now”
Dune Analytics API	Historical exploration—SQL over Dune’s curated blockchain tables	Research, cohorts, backtests, dashboards backed by queries

Rule of thumb: Need streaming or low-latency address/token views across many EVM chains or SVM (Solana / Eclipse, etc.) → start with Sim and chain-specific docs under chains/. Need long-horizon or custom aggregations across Dune SQL models → Analytics API and query execution docs.

When to use which surface (decision flow)

1. Single address or small set — balances, recent activity, NFTs, token metadata → Sim EVM or SVM endpoints (see overviews below).
2. Ongoing monitoring — balance or activity changes for a watchlist → Subscriptions / webhooks (create, update addresses, lifecycle per docs).
3. Token distribution or “top holders” style — Sim token holders / related EVM docs; confirm spam / filtering parameters (e.g. exclude low-liquidity noise) in live API reference.
4. Cross-wallet analytics, custom metrics, or historical slices — execute or manage SQL via Dune Analytics API; combine results with Sim in the application layer if needed.
5. Multichain — confirm chain ID and supported chains in docs before assuming parity across EVM L2s or SVM deployments.

EVM vs SVM (Solana-class)

• EVM: Broad endpoint family—activity, balances, transactions, collectibles, DeFi positions, stablecoins, subscriptions, token info / holders. Use EVM overview as the map.
• SVM: SVM overview — realtime balances and transactions for Solana-class addresses; align address encoding and chain scope with docs. For Solana-only RPC-depth debugging, pair with solana-tracing-specialist and provider docs (e.g. Helius)—Sim is product API, not a full RPC replacement.

Operations: CUs, errors, keys

• Compute Units (CUs) — Billing is CU-based; estimate cost per workflow (polling vs webhooks, batch sizes). Read Compute Units before production sizing.
• Errors — Implement retries with backoff per Error handling; never treat 429/5xx as permanent failure without reading response bodies.
• Secrets — No Sim API keys in front-end bundles. Use server routes or Cloudflare proxy pattern from docs.
• Spam / noise — Use documented token filtering / exclude_spam_tokens-style controls where available; labels and prices change—revalidate for reporting.

Agent and IDE integration

• Agent reference — drop-in file for Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, Gemini CLI, etc.
• Build with AI — llms.txt, Markdown pages, OpenAPI for tool-calling designs.

How this skill fits blockint

Task	Pair with
Abstract “what is blockchain analytics”	blockchain-analytics-operations
Solana forensic tracing patterns	solana-tracing-specialist
Full investigator narrative	on-chain-investigator-agent
Sanctions / compliance screening products	range-ai-investigation-playbook, chainalysis-sanctions-screening — different stacks; do not conflate with Dune outputs

Guardrails

• Compliance — Dune data supports research; sanctions and legal outcomes need designated tools and counsel.
• Attribution — Wallet labels and heuristics can be wrong; separate fact (chain events) from inference (entity names).
• ToS — Respect Dune’s terms, rate limits, and attribution for published queries or embeds.

Authoritative specs (keep open while coding)

Resource	URL
Doc index	docs.sim.dune.com/llms.txt
Quickstart	docs.sim.dune.com/index.md
Dune Analytics API (SQL)	docs.sim.dune.com/dune-analytics-api.md
OpenAPI	docs.sim.dune.com/openapi.json

EVM: overview · activity · balances · transactions · subscriptions · supported chains · token filtering

SVM: overview · balances · transactions