Try Quests to earn NEARFLOW User Retention vs Other Chains
Introduction
- In this Analysis, You will read about FLOW User Retention vs Other Chains. We want to know How sticky are the users on Flow?
- I divided my Analysis into two categories.
- Chain Transactions
- NFT Transactions
- I compared user retention on Flow vs. other L1 chains like Ethereum, Solana, Near, and Algorand.
- I looked for User activities to find out How often users who make a transaction come back and make another transaction one month later? How do monthly active users compare between chains?
Analyzed by Hess - Reading Time Almost 10 Min.
Transactions
New users
We don’t have access to the wallet creation date on all chains. So, New users are based on the first transactions of users on-chain.
- Almost most weeks, Ethereum had a higher number of new users compared to other chains. Until May 2022, Solana was the second top chain based on the total number of new users but after that, Flow chain became on the top list of new users. However, After October, The total weekly number of new users on Flow decreased.
- It seems, among these chains, Flow had the highest growth of new users.
- Near had the lowest number of new users compared to other chains.
Users Retention
Now, It’s time to back the analysis's main question. How sticky are the users on Flow? And its comparison with other chains.
- First, Let’s see the Flow users retention. The highest number of users on FLow made their second transactions on the same day as their first transactions. But After that, About 2.3M wallets returned to the Flow chain After Five months and made another transaction. The next group of Flow users returned After six months. Nearly 1M unique users on Flow had another transaction after six months.
- overall, 1.3M Unique wallets on Flow made their another transactions less than 1 month.
- Compared with another chain, Ethereum users were more active than other chains. The higher number of Ethereum users returned to Ethereum chain less than a month.
- Solana users activity was like Ethereum. Solana users are active as ethereum users.
NFT Users
What is Flow?
- Flow is a blockchain platform that originally was designed for gaming purposes, but has expanded since its launch in 2020. The flow blockchain enables fast, low-cost transactions and supports smart contracts. It powers blockchain applications including NBA Top Shot, a non-fungible token (NFT) offering
What is Ethereum?
- Ethereum is a decentralized blockchain platform that establishes a peer-to-peer network that securely executes and verifies application code, called smart contracts. Smart contracts allow participants to transact with each other without a trusted central authority.
What is Solana?
- Key Takeaways. Solana is a blockchain platform designed to host decentralized, scalable applications. Solana can process many more transactions per second and charges lower transaction fees than rival blockchains like Ethereum.
What is Algorand?
- Algorand is an open-source, decentralized blockchain network that leverages a two-tiered structure and a unique variation of the Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism to increase transaction speeds and achieve finality.
What is Near?
- Built by the NEAR Collective, NEAR was designed to host decentralized applications (dApps), and strives to compete with Ethereum and other leading smart contract-enabled blockchains like EOS and Polkadot. NEAR's native token is also called NEAR, and is used to pay for transaction fees and storage.
Method
Transactions:
Each chain has a Transactions table that all kind of transactions record in that table. So, I used that table and extracted users per chain.
New Users:
I used Min Function and extracted new wallets based on their first on-chain transactions. Then, I filtered the date and counted weekly new users since January of 2022.
Also, I joined my findings with Ethereum Dim date table and extracted month name.
Retention:
I calculated the number of days between first transaction of user and its next transaction. Then, I created categories and counted number of users per each category.
NFTs:
Like Transactions , Each chain has a NFT table. I did like transactions and examined new users, Retention and …. I should mention that Near data is based on Mint activities but other chains are based on Secondary sales.
Total weekly Users
Before Users retention, I took a quick glance at the chain’s weekly users. The number of users is unique per week.
- The daily share of transactions shows Solana and Ethereum had the highest share per week. Until Late February, Algorand had 16-40% of the user’s share but Ethereum and Solana took its share. After that time, Since March 14, The weekly share of Users on Flow increased from 1% to 28%. After some weeks, The weekly share of Flow users decreased but recently, in November increased significantly and reached 52%.
- Overall, Ethereum has 53% of Total users, Algorand is in second with 17% of total users and Third place is Solana with 15%. Flow with 10% is higher than Near and is in fourth place. compared to these chains, the Near chain has only 4.8% of total users.
NFT Users
So Far, We have examined user retention and active users per chain. Now, It’s time to examine user behavior on NFTs per chain. Before I looked for NFT user retention, I examined each chain's weekly number of users and new NFT users.
- You may know that Solana and Ethereum have the highest number of NFT users compared to other chains. These two chains are more Popular among NFT users. On the other side, Flow is an NFT blockchain, But they have fewer NFT users than Ethereum and Solana.
- Due to the Fifa Collect collection, the total daily number of Algorand Users increased, but Near, Ethereum and Flow decreased over time.
- Solana is another chain in the total weekly number of NFT users that decreased but recently increased again.
- Overall, Ethereum has 57% of total NFT users, Solana has 27.8%, and Flow, with 13.7% of NFT users, is in third place.
New NFT Users
Among these chains, Ethereum and Solana had the highest number of New users over time. Until August, Ethereum was in first place, but after that, Solana took Ethereum's place in the number of new users. Their weekly number of new users didn’t change too much.
- Flow is in third place based on the total weekly number of new users. But Unlike Solana and Ethereum, The total weekly number of new NFT users decreased on Flow. Also, in some weeks of September and October, Algorand took Flow place.
- The highest growth in the Number of new NFTs users belongs to Solana. Their New NFT users have increased significantly since August.
NFT Users Retention
User retention on all chains is similar to each other. The highest number of NFTs users had another transaction on the same day as their first transaction. But after that, They returned less than a week for other NFT transactions.
- After this group of users, The third large group of users returned less than a month, and after that, the highest number of users returned a day after their first transactions.
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- In the first two months of the year, January and February, Algorand had the highest of new users compared to other chains. In these two months, Ethereum had the second highest of new users.
- between March and April, Ethereum had the highest number of new users and Solana was the second chain with the highest number of new users.
- In May, Still, Ethereum had the highest number of new users but second place wasn’t Solana. It was Algorand.
- In June, Flow became on the top list and with 3M new users, Had the highest number of new users that month.
- In July, Ethereum had the highest number of new users but Flow with 1M new users was the second top chain.
- September was Near month. After Ethereum, Near with 1M, new users was the second top chain.
- In the last three months, Ethereum was the Top chain but the second place was different.
ALL CODES AND CONTENTS WERE WRITTEN BY HESS.
As you can see, If we ignore the same-day transactions, The second large group of Flow users returned to the Flow chain After five months, while the second large number of other chains users returned less than a week or month.
- I examined the number of top users for each chain too. Who are the Top users? Any users that had transactions each month since January. It means they had at least one monthly transaction from January until December 2022.
- Ethereum has 109K users that had at least one transaction each month. The second chain is Solana, with 42K unique users with at least one transaction every month. Flow, with 17K unique users, is in third place. These users had one transaction every month on the Flow chain.
To understand user retention, I separated a group of users that returned to the chain after a month and counted them per chain.
- Ethereum and Solana had the highest number of users that returned after one month to these chains. However, Overtime, The total weekly number of users on Solana with this criteria decreased, and Ethereum increased.
- The highest growth of these types of users was for the Flow chain. Over time, The total weekly number of users that returned to the chain after a month increased from 7-8K weekly in January to 250K in December.
- On Near, The total weekly number of users that returned after a month increased over time, but Algorand was a chain that decreased recently compared to the beginning months of the year.
The best month for Flow chain was January. About 46K new NFT users joined the Flow chain with one transaction in the NFT category. The worst month for Flow chain was July. The lowest number of new NFT users joined this chain in that month.
- Ethereum had the highest number of new NFT users almost every month compared to other chains. Only in October and November did Solana take Ethereum Place.
- Near and Algorand had the lowest of new users compared to other chains.
- Overall, Since January 2022, Ethereum had 1.3M new NFT users, Solana had 837K, and Flow had 135K new NFT users.
As you can see, If we ignore the same day, The large group of Flow users returned less than a week. However, The share of these users was similar to number of users that returned less than a month on Flow chain. Almost, Other chains NFT users had similar activities.
- Interestingly, Flow has the second number of users that had at least of NFT transaction every month after Ethereum users.
Like Users transactions, I examined those users that returned after one month for another NFT transaction.
- During October and November, The majority of Solana NFT users returned after a month for another NFT tranasctions. During that time, The total weekly number of NFT users with this criteria increased significantly.
- Algorand was like Solana. The total weekly number of users that returned after a month for other transactions increased, but in other chains like Ethereum, Flow, and Near, The total weekly number of these types of users decreased.
Conclusion
Transactions Retention:
- Most Ethereum, Solana, Algorand, and Near users returned to the chain in less than a week, and the second large group of users returned in less than a month if we ignore the same-day transactions.
- The flow was the only chain their large group of users returned after five months to Flow chain.
NFT users Retention:
- Based on NFT transactions, The user’s behavior on all chains was similar. They made their second transaction in less than a week and, after that, less than a month. Flow had the highest number of users that had at least one transactions every month after Ethereum.