Degenerate Ape Academy Scales Their Accounting

In August 2021, Degenerate Ape Academy (DAA) catapulted itself into Solana’s ecosystem— minting 10,000 NFTs in only a few minutes, with some selling for as much as $1.1M. As both their community and NFT collections skyrocketed, DAA urgently needed to get their Web3 accounting under control. They partnered with Integral to get complete coverage of their Solana activity, close their month-end 4x faster, and get real-time visibility into their treasury.

Challenge

Skyrocketing growth needs automated finances

Degenerate Ape Academy (DAA) took off in the Solana ecosystem, becoming one of the most important NFT collections. With exponential growth came exponential data scale. Having robust financials was important to DAA, but manually processing their volume of financial transactions was time-consuming and left room for human error.

Before Integral, month-ends were done manually in spreadsheets. DAA downloaded their transactions across wallets from Solana block explorers and manually stitched the data together. They estimated SOL to USD prices down to the minute, filtered for specific wallet addresses to identify payouts, categorized their income streams, and calculated gains/losses — all by hand.

This process became so time-consuming, the DAA team considered building their own tool internally. They created dashboards, but building out a full accounting platform would have been too expensive. They needed a better solution.

Solana is a technically complex blockchain

In addition to the scale of data they had to manage, getting accurate and complete transactions from the Solana blockchain was a major challenge. The Solana ecosystem is technically complex. Even specialized block explorers may only provide a partial picture of on-chain activity, meaning the transaction ledger and wallet balance may not match.

To get a complete picture, DAA had to merge transactions from multiple sources, while eliminating duplicates. They needed a better solution that could be relied on for data accuracy and completeness.

On-Chain Activity Lacks Visibility

When so much time is spent manually reconciling transactions, it becomes difficult to get a complete view of your Web3 treasury. Whenever they needed to see their cash on hand, DAA checked block explorers for wallet balances. They needed a centralized dashboard to see a complete, real-time picture of their Web3 treasury across wallets, tokens, and NFT collections.

Solution

Degenerate Ape Academy partnered with Integral to ensure completeness for their Solana activity, automate their accounting needs, and get real-time visibility into their treasury.

Integral first worked with DAA to ensure complete coverage of their on-chain Solana activity, including primary and secondary sales across their NFT collections. Data accuracy is ensured by reading transactions directly from the blockchain using a combination of RPC APIs from leading node providers.

Once their transactions were in Integral, DAA created rules to automatically recognize revenue across their primary and secondary sales. Using Integral’s real-time pricing service, DAA had access to minute-by-minute pricing for their reporting and audit needs. Integral also automatically synced transactions to DAA’s accounting ERP, completely removing the need for manual entries. This year, DAA filed their corporate tax returns more efficiently using Integral’s quick search functionality compared to last year.

“Every step of bookkeeping was frustrating before Integral. With Integral, we trust our data is accurate and all of the information we need is at our fingertips. I’ve gone from working 40 hours a week on boring accounting tasks to just 5-10 hours a week.”

Cassiopeia · Accounting at Degenerate Ape Academy

Like many Web3 companies, revenue streams see more volatility compared to TradFi businesses. With multiple wallets receiving daily transactions, organizing finances can be a challenge. Executives at DAA found Integral’s Treasury module to be the remedy. They are now able to quickly understand which tokens are actively held across which wallets and track their associated asset exposure.

As a result, Degenerate Ape Academy has a clear, real-time financial view and gets their bookkeeping done 4x faster.

“I keep Integral open on my browser at all times. It gives me an instantaneous picture of our cash on hand, and allows me to easily surface insights as we launch new projects.”

Nickyscanz · Strategy at Degenerate Ape Academy

Results

Degenerate Ape Academy now has a scalable accounting process and closes their month-ends 4x faster with Integral. Thanks to Integral’s robust Solana integration, DAA also has full confidence that their accounting is fully compliant according to GAAP standards.

Within just one week of implementation, DAA successfully halved the time required for crucial financial activities, such as syncing transactions to their ERP. The entire process from consolidating transactions, pricing them, calculating gains/losses, categorizing income, and syncing to their ERpP was fully automated.

DAA executives now have access to real-time financial insights, significantly reducing their previous hourly commitment. This increased efficiency empowers DAA to make informed decisions effectively as they look to expand their presence in the Solana ecosystem and beyond.