Overview
This guide walks you through a five-stage pipeline: Discover → Research → Verify → Decide → Execute. Run all five stages together as a morning routine, or use each stage on its own. By the end, you'll go from "what should I look at?" to a confirmed, executed trade — without leaving your chat session.
Tip: New to MoonPay CLI? Get installed and authenticated first with MoonPay CLI for AI agents before following this guide.
Install the required skills
</> Bash
npx skills add moonpay/skills --skill messari-token-research messari-alpha-scout moonpay-discover-tokens maiat-token-safety moonpay-swap-tokens
Skills used: messari-token-research · messari-alpha-scout · messari-funding-intel · messari-deep-research · moonpay-discover-tokens · dune-analytics · allium-onchain-data · maiat-token-safety · moonpay-swap-tokens
Stage 1: Discover — what's worth researching?
Note: Messari research tools consume x402 credits (paid in USDC). Costs are shown per query throughout this guide. On-chain tools like moonpay-discover-tokens, maiat-token-safety, Dune, and Allium are free or have a free tier.
Find trending narratives
Cost: ~$1.25 USDC. Run alpha scout to get mindshare gainers, trending topics, high-momentum assets, and emerging narratives. Use this as your daily scan — it shows what the market is paying attention to right now.
Find trending tokens by on-chain signal
What are the top trending tokens on Solana with more than $500K volume in the last 24 hours?
moonpay-discover-tokens pulls from on-chain activity, not social sentiment.
Track where VC money is going
/messari-funding-intel
Cost: ~$0.75–$1.25 USDC. Returns recent funding rounds, M&A activity, active VC funds, and emerging sectors. Capital flows tend to precede price moves — this is the early signal.
Tip: Want to explore everything Messari skills can do? See What you can build with MoonPay Skills for the full list of research skill combinations.
Stage 2: Research — understand what you found
Run a token deep dive
Research SOL using Messari.
Cost: ~$1.00–$1.50 USDC. Returns tokenomics, price history, sentiment signals, recent news, supply events, and an AI-synthesized brief with upside and risk signals.
Generate a long-form report
/messari-deep-research
Write a deep research report on the Solana DeFi ecosystem.
Note: Deep research reports run asynchronously and take 5–15 minutes to complete. The agent will notify you when the report is ready — you don't need to wait in the same session.
Cost: ~$0.50–$2.00 USDC. Returns an institutional-quality report covering protocol analysis, market dynamics, key risks, and outlook.
Confirm the narrative with on-chain data
Query Dune: show me daily active addresses on Solana for the last 30 days, and weekly DEX volume across Jupiter, Orca, and Raydium.
Dune queries raw on-chain data. Use it to check what Messari's narrative says against actual on-chain activity.
Get wallet-level token data
Using Allium: what's the current holder distribution for this token?
How many unique wallets hold more than 1000 tokens?
Allium returns holder concentration, transaction history, and price history across chains.
Stage 3: Verify — is it safe to buy?
Run a token safety check
Before any execution, run:
Run a safety check on this token:
Note: If maiat-token-safety flags a token, the agent will not proceed with execution. You can ask Claude to explain the specific risks flagged before deciding whether to proceed manually.
maiat-token-safety checks for honeypots, rug pull signals, high-tax traps, and suspicious contract patterns. One prompt, a few seconds, a clear pass or fail.
Add reasoning verification for higher-conviction trades
Based on the research brief and safety check, verify the trade decision
before I execute: buy $200 SOL.
thoughtproof-reasoning-check runs adversarial critique across multiple models and returns ALLOW, BLOCK, or UNCERTAIN with a confidence score.
Stage 4: Execute
Research passed. Safety check passed. Execute: swap $200 USDC to SOL.
Important: Stage 4 executes a real swap. Confirm the research brief and safety check results before proceeding. The agent will not execute without your explicit approval.
moonpay-swap-tokens handles routing, liquidity aggregation, and broadcast. The swap settles to your wallet in seconds.
Full morning routine (one session)
Important: The full morning routine runs multiple paid Messari queries and may surface tokens for you to buy. Total research cost is approximately $5–8 USDC. Review all results before making any trading decisions.
Run this sequence as a single prompt:
1. Run alpha scout — what narratives are heating up?
2. Check funding intel — any notable rounds in the last week?
3. Pull trending Solana tokens with volume > $1M
4. For the top 3 trending tokens: run Messari research briefs
5. For any token the brief is bullish on: run a safety check
6. Show me the results. I'll decide which to buy.
Total cost: ~$5–8 USDC for the full research stack. Time: ~15 minutes (token research runs fast; deep research runs in the background).
Connect research to an automated strategy
Once you have a view, pass it directly to the trading automation skill:
Based on the Messari brief: SOL looks bullish medium-term with a key unlock risk in 47 days. Set up a 20-day DCA of $30/day into SOL, then stop before the unlock date.
Note: Token unlock dates and vesting schedules are available through Messari research briefs. Ask Claude to include unlock risk in any token research brief before setting up an automated strategy.
Tip: Want to take your strategy further? See Use case: The autonomous trader for a complete guide to setting up DCA, limit orders, and stop losses in a single conversation.
Research informs the strategy. Automation executes it. The agent connects both in one conversation.
Cost summary
Research type | Approximate cost |
Alpha scout | ~$1.25 USDC |
Token research (per token) | ~$1.00–$1.50 USDC |
Funding intelligence | ~$0.75–$1.25 USDC |
Deep research report | ~$0.50–$2.00 USDC |
Token safety check | Free (on-chain) |
Dune query | Dune credits (free tier available) |
Allium query | Free tier available |
Tip: A full morning brief with three token deep dives runs ~$5–8 USDC total — less than a cup of coffee for institutional-grade research output.