Introduction

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 with a use case 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.

One of the leading wallet providers in FLOW blockchain, subsidizes the transaction fees of its users. Are there other wallets subsidizing their users’s fees? Let’s dive into it!

Methodology

For this analysis, I created a CTE structure with a table containing the raw data. I joined the flow.core.fact_transactions and flow.core.fact_events tables to list all transactions that have different payer than the proposer. This table was joined with the flow.core.dim_contract_labels table to identify the accounts and number of transactions and fees were aggregated by account name and date.

Most addresses can be identified by joining with the labels table, but since the label corresponds to the contract name and one address can have multiple contracts, some manual rework is needed to group different labels to the same address.

Moreover, I created some wallets on Dapper and Lilico to try to find some addresses for these two platforms, since they not identified with the labels.

Since different types of events have different patterns, I created two queries, one with ‘FeesDeducted’ and another with ‘AccountCreated’ as event types. I also created a query with no constraints - with all event types.

The following addresses have been identified from a ‘FeesDeducted’ event type:

• 0x38c0aa1b1eaa65cc is related to EnemyMetal, a game based NFT collection with its own marketplace
• 0x1f56a1e665826a52 is related to Eternal, a platform enabling twitch content creators to create their owm Moments collections, mimicking TopShot concept
• 0x94bb84386cfc3b5d is related to Everbloom, a platform enabling content creators and artist to transform their creativity into NFTs

The following addresses have been identified from a ‘AccountCreated’ event type:

• 0x6f649aee955bef6d is related to RCRDSHPNFT marketplace, which also seems to subsidize transaction fees to its users
• 0x614e3b0dcf011ca0 is related to the NWayPlay Marketplace, where Olympic Pins as NFT can be traded. NWayPlay project also has plans to launch a play-to-earn game, NFT-based with the Winter Olympics Games in Beijing 2022 as a theme
• 0x9b00972a3ecb364b is related to the the officially licensed Dr. Seuss NFT Collection, Seussibles
• 0x319e67f2ef9d937f is related to the Proof-of_Attendance FLOAT tokens, although only 2 ‘AccountCreated’ txs have been found.

By creating a new account on some platforms, I am able to identify their addresses:

• 0x18eb4ee6b3c026d2 for Dapper
• 0x33f75ff0b830dcec for Lilico
• 0x1b65c33d7a352c61 for FanCraze, a Cricket-Themen NFT Marketplace

Note: the identifications were done by analyzing the queried tx_id in flowscan.

Results

From the ‘FeesDeducted’ Events, the dominace of Top Shot (NBA NFT collectibles) and Joyride (gaming focused NFT platform) is visible, with both platforms accounting for over 90% of total transactions and fees for transactions where the payer is not the proposer. This means that also these platforms are subsidizing the network fees for their users. The third address corresponds to Blocto, followed by RCRDSHPNFT and FanCraze. In total, over 14M transactions paid for over 200 FLOW, with a current value at the time of the writing of around 300$.

The ‘AccountCreated’ Events give a different picture. Joyride diminates here with almost 70% of the transactions concentrated in May 25th, where almost 100k accounts were created. RDCRSHPNFT and Blocto are 2nd and 3rd, each with over 20k accounts over time.

When considering all the event types, the same trend as in ‘FeesDeducted’ occurs, but with over 120M transactions.

Unfortunately, neither Dapper or Lilico wallet accounts appear on the address list, so the search for the other wallet providers cannot be solved

Conclusions

Blocto comes in third place for the transaction and fee volumes when comparing platforms or services which subsidize the network fee in FLOW. This is a great decision since for the cost of 14M transactions (roughly 300$) a platform can incentivize onboarding of new users that can start to use the blockchain without the hussle of previously adquiring tokens through a fiat on ramp and can at least navigate through a marketplace and take a look without commiting to any token purchase.

Can you imagine the same happened in Ethereum?