Flow blockchain

The blockchain company Dapper Labs developed Cryptokitties, a NFT cat-collectible game on Ethereum which was one of the first of its kind and a clear use of blockchain technology not related to digital currency. In 2017, there was a major spike in Ethereum's transactions by Cryptokitties players which caused the network to be clogged. This revealed the need to level Ethereum up to be ready for massive adoption.

But Dapper Team had other plans and after some years researching and partnering with big players in and out of the cryptoindustry announced the launch of a new blockchain designed with mainstream consumers in mind - a network capable of scaling to the needs of games with massive player base and providing the tools for developers to create decentralized apps (dApps) with its own resource-oriented programming language Cadence. With it, upgradeable smart contracts can be created easily.

The blockchain became operational in May 2020 and in June 2020 the first application went live - NBA Top Shot, an officially-license digital collectible marketplace. Since then, Flow has seen the launch of several NFT projects from other sporting events - NFL, UFC, MotoGP... the list is quite incredible.

Blocto is a leading brand of cross-chain wallet from Taiwan and it is developing heavily for interaction in the Flow blockchain. It is one of two major wallets in the ecosystem - together with Dapper Wallet and has launched the beta the BloctoSwap app allowing users to swap between 8 native Flow tokens.

Let's find out what tokens users are swapping for!

Methodology

Two queries will help us analyse user behaviour with regards to swaps and activities:

The first query will aggregate the number of transactions by token from flow.core.fact_swaps table.

A total of 8 tokens are available for swapping in BloctoSwap app. Aside from FLOW, USDC, and FUSD (Flow's native stablecoin) the following can also be found in the data:

• tUSDT - teleported ERC-20 USDT token on the Flow blockchain
• STARLY - collectible marketplace token
• REVV - gaming motorsport ecosystem token
• BLT - the utility and governance token of Blocto ecosystem
• SPRT - sports metaverse fan token

The second query will calculate count (distinct tx_id) for total swaps from the flow.core.fact_swaps table and total nft sales from flow.core.fact_nft_sales table as well as different event_type activities from flow.core.fact_events:

• event_type = 'Borrow' or event_type = 'RepayBorrow' for Borrow activity
• event_type = 'FLOATClaimed' for FLOAT activity
• event_type like '%Teleported%' for USDT ERC-20 token teleport activity (both directions)

Results

It will then join all results, showing the daily number of transactions as well as cumulative sums since May 9th for all activities above.

Figure 1. shows the daily swaps by token, with FLOW, USDT and FUSD being the most popular ones. Notice how from May 23rd swapping of FUSD decreases significantly.

Figure 2. shows the number of transactions by activity.

• NFT sales show an increased activity in May which started declining by the end of the month and is currently at time frame lows
• FLOAT claims started low but gained momentum with ATH daily claims of almost 100k on May 23rd. After the peak, it declined drastically and got up again in the first half of June.
• Number of swaps have a similar trend as NFT sales, higher in May with a peak May 20th and declining ativity in June.
• Borrows (including repayments) and bridging with Ethereum USDT ERC-20 token are not significant in comparison with the top 3 activities.

Figures 3. and 4. show the correlation between number of swaps and nft sales and FLOATs claimed respectively. As hinted from Figure 2., swaps - nft sales correlation is bigger than swaps - FLOAT due to the more similar trend but it is not conclusive (not a strong correlation)

Figures 5. and 6. show the cumulative number of swaps by token and the cumulative number of transactions for each of the 5 defined activities.

• USDC doubles FLOW in swap activity. FUSD swaps stagnate below FLOW.

• It is interesting to see that FLOAT mints overtook NFT sales (for the time frame analysed).

Conclusion

NFT Sales activity was expected to have big significance in the FLOW blockchain,since it has been a foundational pillar. FLOAT proof-of-attendance platform with its broad use case including ticketing (big sinergies with the mainstream sport events that are an important part of FLOW) was not that expected but with the 1M FLOATs milestone in around a month will be a force to be reckoned with!

Swaps are still not a very important activity of FLOW since currently BloctoSwap has only 8 tokens listed and is still developing its product.

Although NFT Sales incentivize token swaps it cannot be concluded that they are causing the swap activity spikes.

What are these things FLOATing on FLOW?

FLOAT is a Flow-enabled proof of attendance platform built by Emerald City, FLOW's first DAO. It has different options when creating and can be configured in a smart contract to be transferred i.e. when minting a NFT:

• tradeable or non-transferable (soulbound)
• minted by user or distributed by creator
• limited or unlimited quantity
• with or withou time limit
• open mint or code-based mint
• free or paid mint (ticket use case)

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