The deck is easier to read, but porting over to Mirror for posterity for my web3 learnings.

Any user diving into web3 will realize quickly that it is really hard to keep track of everything. There are a number of different portfolio trackers out there, so I decided to play with all of them and share some early observations in the products.

This post covers:

1. tl;dr
2. Background and context
3. Overall themes across the three stages of a user’s portfolio management journey
   1. Understanding your portfolio
   2. Learning how to grow your portfolio
   3. Executing strategies to grow your portfolio
4. Detailed breakdown and comparisons

tl;dr

Background & Context

Key user archetypes used for this exercise:

1. Basic token + NFT portfolio management (e.g. just checking existing balance across chains)
2. NFT portfolio management
3. Beginner DeFi portfolio management
4. Degen DeFi portfolio management

The following jobs were used to map out the portfolio management journey

1. [Understand] Ability to track and manage my portfolio balances
   1. Track tokens and NFTs across different chains
   2. Understand changes in total balances over periods of time
   3. See different transactions from my wallet
2. [Learn/Grow] Ability to grow my portfolio
   1. Understand how I can grow my portfolio via other DeFi strategies or NFT projects via learning about things like staking, LP tools
   2. Monitor other wallets and get pushed updates for subscriptions I’m following
3. [Executing] Ability to take action on my portfolio
   1. Exchange tokens in my portfolio for other tokens
   2. Revoke access and permissions that my portfolio has given

These products were reviewed:

1. Zapper
2. Zerion
3. DeBank
4. Cointracker
5. Apeboard
6. NFT specific
   1. NFTBank
   2. Floors
   3. Curious Addy portfolio tracker

Themes in “understanding your wallet”

1. Most solutions accurately tell you exactly what’s in your wallet right now. This is the most common tablestakes feature; different solutions then start to splinter off with more detailed focus areas.
2. After that, most solutions ladder up with social-based features like following other wallets or discovering most popular wallets
3. Number of chains covered is a quick differentiator for the user archetype that is covered, where some solutions have a smaller overall feature set, but cover more popular DeFi chains
4. Notable product gaps in the landscape
   1. Tracking and revoking token permissions
   2. Tracking portfolio over time
   3. Costs basis of entry points
   4. Lack of context on DeFi principles for basic portfolio management features

Themes in “learning” how to grow your portfolio

1. Many solutions implicitly encourage users to run before walking. Zapper and Zerion offer robust solutions across exchanging tokens, borrowing, lending, etc, but these are complex concepts for a beginner.
   1. Beginner POV: beginners don’t understand what most of these concepts are, and most of the yields shown are extremely unattractive especially when gas is factored in. Adding in cheaper chains for similar principles or introducing users to simpler concepts like staking ETH on Lido instead of adding to a Uniswap liquidity pool are easier on-ramps
   2. Advanced POV: advanced users probably won’t use these solutions because they’re operating at a scale where they have other dApps specifically used to solve these solutions
2. Zerion and NFTBank both have “explore” pages that do the best job of helping users discover projects
   1. Exploring and finding new projects/protocols to learn and jump into is broadly a theme that’s undersolved for in Web3 today.

Themes in “executing” to grow your portfolio

1. Zapper and Zerion have the strongest integrations for executing in their products relative to other portfolio management trackers. Executing includes swapping tokens, entering into LP positions, or lending/borrowing directly from the solution.
2. Degen DeFi portfolio trackers notably omit executing likely because the user has enough experience to find a cheaper solution to executing their trade
   1. Although Apeboard seems to be experimenting with an Ape Blender and Bridge solution, but seems too early to see what the full potential of these features are.

Detailed breakdown

Full feature matrix is here.

Basic portfolio management

1. Zapper and Zerion are the best consumer solutions for basic management of tokens and NFTs. Other evaluated solutions support more advanced use cases more effectively.
   1. Zapper leans harder on social integrations, giving the ability to follow and track wallets
   2. Zerion is better at showing historical balances for tokens on Ethereum
2. DeBank is the only solution that offers users the ability to see what permissions they’ve given and what the liable risk is. This is a feature that all consumer solutions should implement given the importance of educating users on how to self-custody.
3. Zapper and Zerion notably have a number of integrations to take actions with tokens (e.g. buying, selling, lending, jumping into liquidity pools) but lack user education on what these terms mean or how to do them. There’s potentially a growth oppt in educating users on basic DeFi principles to ladder into stronger usage of these other features

NFT portfolio management

1. NFTBank is by far the best free solution available for portfolio tracking. It has strong coverage of tracking PnL across different projects and makes the most active attempt to differentiate prices with floor traits. The explore page also offered a nice view into potentially interesting projects.
2. Tracking NFTs in your wallet by floor price is the tablestakes solution everyone offers. Alternative NFT management solutions tend to focus on nailing one job well and the broader ecosystem is more more fragmented than Defi portfolio management tracking
3. Other gated solutions e.g. Floors, and Curious Addy’s proprietary solution focus on doing one job well
   1. Floors shows floors for your various projects and the change in your portfolio over time
   2. Curious Addy shows your initial investment and current unrealized ROI/gains

Basic DeFi

1. DeBank and Apeboard support the basic DeFi use case more effectively than other evaluated solutions primarily because of their breadth of coverage across different chains
2. Zerion has the framework for some nice features (e.g. profit and loss (PnL) tracker over time) but the features only work for Ethereum based tokens
3. Terra as a chain is notably missing in many solutions despite being 2nd in TVL for DeFi. Apeboard was the only solution that supported it.
4. Functionally, the largest gaps for all of these solutions was the ability to track initial cost basis, then PnL, and for users to track what yields are.

Degen DeFi

1. DeBank and Apeboard stand out significantly as the only usable portfolio management trackers for more advanced DeFi use cases, primarily due to their coverage of chains and ability to clearly show token balances and yields
2. Apeboard has some very interesting beta features that are a bit rough right now but show promise
   1. Analytics shows PnL over time (and against BTC, ETH), portfolio breakdowns across protocols
   2. Ape Tools allows users to scan for pools for tokens they care about and see expected yield rates
   3. Some chains (e.g. Aurora) have an APR calculator that shows daily yield
3. If a solution can get strong coverage across chains, there’s significant room to differentiate here by giving users a better sense of PnL with cost basis data, as well as more easily tracking yield over time as mapped to potential impermanent loss