Introduction:

Welcome to our analysis of the NEAR ecosystem. In this dashboard, we will be delving into a comprehensive examination of several key metrics that were I believe were not thoroughly reviewed in the latest transparency report. These metrics include transaction fees, transaction speed, transaction success rate, NFTs, and contracts on the NEAR platform. Through our investigation, we aim to provide a detailed understanding of these metrics and their implications on the health of the NEAR ecosystem. Join us as we explore the data and draw conclusions on the current state and future prospects of the NEAR network.

What is Near?

NEAR Protocol (NEAR) is a blockchain-based decentralized application platform to power the future open web and serves as a collective, a foundation, and a development platform. Users can create new coins, applications, and industries on this web without the need for a central authority to oversee the process. The platform executes apps that share a secure pool of resources; these applications use data and identities entirely controlled by users. For more information click here.

Methodology:

In this dashboard I am going to be looking at the metrics described above over the last 90 days. I am doing this in order to get an understanding how the platform has been over the past couple months and how that compares to how the platform is currently performing, from this I will be able to draw on the overall health of NEAR. In this dashboard I will also be discussing each of these metrics in detail and providing any insights I find valuable. I will then sum up these insights in a conclusion at the end of the my dashboard where I highlight the most interesting things I found.

Contracts:

Contract Analysis:

If we first draw our attention to the “Weekly New Contracts Deployed” graph we can see that over the last 90 days the amount of contracts deployed weekly seems to be around 200, this is significantly down from the average of 633 contracts a day as well as the median of 508 a day. These numbers are likely skewed though by contracts deployment early on because if we look at the “Cumulative Contracts Deployed Over Time” graph we can see that starting around July of 2022 the amount of contracts deployed daily began to plateau significantly and the curve seems to be getting more flat each day highlighting the the amount of contracts deployed have really started to slow down overtime. If we move onto the “Contracts Deployed Over time by Total Interactions” graph we can see that not only are there less contracts being deployed on a daily basis as seen earlier but it appears that they are getting much less interaction as well. Although this is also a result of the fact that contracts deployed earlier have more time to be used it also seem that these contracts are just not in use with many of them having less than 5 overall interactions, even after being deployed for over a month. Overall it appears that there are much less contracts being deployed now then at any point on NEAR, and there are less users interacting with these contracts as well.

Transactions:

Transaction Fee Analysis:

If we look at the graph at the top labeled “Weekly Total Transactions” we can see that over the last 90 days it appears that the number of transactions weekly have been on a downward trend with each week seemingly getting worse than the one before it. Similarly we see the same trend when looking at the weekly total transaction fees collected as there are just less overall transactions on NEAR. On top of that it seems like the average size of a transaction fee on NEAR has increased slightly over the last 90 days, although not by enough to counteract the loss of transactions. Overall transactions have been on the decline as of recent and thus the overall transaction fees have also been on a decline.

Transaction Speed and Success Rate Analysis:

If we look at the first graph in the top left corner we can see that the average TPS daily has been on the decline over the last 90 days likely as a result of the overall transactions per day being down and thus there are less transaction to process. If we move onto the graph in the top right corner we can see that the time per block has increased slightly over the last 90 days going from around 1.2 seconds on average to 1.25-1.3 seconds closer to the current date. Now lets move onto transaction success rate, we can see that for the most part the percentage of successful transactions has gone down slightly although it is mostly the same which is likely a result of the fact that there are less transactions overall to process. For the last several weeks it has been sitting at roughly 90% success rate. Overall it seems that TPS has gone down with the transactions going down and transaction success rate has gone up slightly likely due to the same cause.

NFTs:

NFT Sales Analysis:

First lets draw our attention to the “Weekly NFT Sales Volume In NEAR” graph here we can see that the sales volume increased until around October 31st before going back down and then climbing up again from November 14th all the way to January 1st. It appears that the NEAR NFT scene hasn’t been doing half bad as of recent. If we move onto the “Weekly Average NFT Sales Price in NEAR” graph we can see that the average price of NEAR NFTs also appears to be up as of recent. Finally if we move onto the “Weekly NFT Sales” graph we can see that NFT sales appear to have stayed the same on most weeks with the exception of the week of November 6th where there was a massive spike in sales of over 15K interestingly enough that week had the lowest average sales price for NFTs by a large margin and thus the sales volume overall wasn’t as large as one would expect for how many sales there were. This means that a lot of very cheap NFTs were sold during this week. Overall it appears that NFT sales volume is on the rise as of recent due to an increase in the average price of NFTs as the amount sold weekly appears to be mostly the same.

NFT Mints Analysis:

If we look at the graph at the top of the page we can see the for the most part the weekly NFT mints has stayed the same with the exception of the week of October 31st and November 6th, which lines up with the massive amount of sales on the week of November 6th meaning a lot of cheap NFTs were likely minted between those two weeks and then sold on the week of November 6th. Moving on though the mints closer to the current date seem to follow a pretty typical pattern. If we move onto the weekly average NFT mint size we can see that after the week of November 6th the average price of mints spiked pretty significantly and has stayed that way into the current date. Moving onto the final graph in this section we can see that although the average mint fee went up the volume in fees appears to not have changed a ton with some weeks seeing large spikes in volume and others seeing little to none. Overall the mints have followed a pretty normal schedule although the fees to mint seem to have increased as of late.

Conclusion:

1. Starting around late July of 2022 the amount of contracts deployed daily began to slow down significantly and seems to have gotten more slow overtime with roughly 200 contracts deployed weekly down from an average of 633 daily.
2. Not only is contract deployment down but it appears that contracts are receiving much less interaction than they have in the past.
3. The amount of transactions and thus transaction fees as well have been on a downward trend over the last 90 days.
4. Transaction success rate is slightly up as of recent likely as a result of less overall transactions.
5. NFT sales volume has been up as of recent as a result of higher average NFT prices as the sales have stayed mostly the same.
6. NFT mints are continuing to follow most of the same patterns although the average fee for minting NFTs has gone up significantly.
7. Overall looking at the health of NEAR from the metrics in this dashboard it appears that NEAR is not healthy with the platform being down in transaction and contract metrics and only seeing a slight improvement in the NFT scene which has never been a particularly important part of NEAR as it brings in considerably little volume in total.