Ethereum and Polygon preserve their lead over newer Ethereum Digital Machine (EVM) chains in drawing new customers and growing trading volumes, as revealed by Flipside’s “New EVM Customers: Q1 Snapshot” report.
As of March 27, Ethereum had 13.4 million new customers, whereas Polygon had 12.3 million, accounting for roughly 70% of the overall variety of new EVM customers this yr. In distinction, Arbitrum has added 4.7 million customers because the starting of 2024.
Whereas Ethereum’s mainnet maintains its historic dominance, Layer-2 protocols are processing extra knowledge. Decentralized finance (defi) stays the important thing attraction for brand new customers, with Ethereum main in trading quantity at $12 billion in Q1.
Moreover, the upward pattern of defi activity contrasted with the earlier yr’s intermittent, unstable swings, indicating a rising curiosity and participation in DeFi amongst novices in the blockchain house.
Arbitrum ranked second on the record, with a $9.5 billion achieve because the starting of 2024. The Flipside report attributes this milestone to elevated new user activity in Arbitrum’s defi house. In distinction, Polygon’s excessive new user numbers are ascribed to a rise in non-fungible token (NFT) activity.
With a document 243,000 new customers as of March 16, Base has almost octupled its new user base since January, owing to Coinbase’s efforts to simplify cryptocurrency for novices.
“Whereas this nonetheless places Base far behind the main EVM chains in phrases of general new user quantity, it nonetheless represents spectacular growth, notably because the chain’s activity waned throughout the last months of 2023,” the report said.
The report notes that the surge coincides with Bitcoin reaching a brand new all-time excessive and represents the very best single-day new user rely amongst EVM chains this yr.
Demonstrating variety, a good portion of newly registered customers work together with an assortment of decentralized purposes (dApps) on Ethereum. Nevertheless, the evaluation discovered that Ethereum didn’t have probably the most evenly distributed app adoption among the many six analyzed chains.
“This distinction goes to Base, the place the distinction in new user quantity between the chain’s 1 and 2 apps was solely 16.9%, in comparison with Ethereum’s ~300%.”
“The truth that Base is comparatively new seemingly diminished early protocols’ first mover benefit and consequent community results, stopping user consolidation round a single app.”
Token swaps and bridging apps are the commonest entrance factors for brand new customers on EVM chains, with Uniswap and Orbiter Finance main the best way on Ethereum and Base, respectively.
As revealed by extra insights in the Flipside report, NFT trading activity throughout EVM chains painted a muddled image.
New user NFT trading on Ethereum and Base elevated steadily, whereas it declined considerably on Polygon from its early peaks; this variation highlights the erratic nature of curiosity in NFTs and means that they might not proceed to dominate the market narrative in the upcoming cycle as that they had in the previous.
Furthermore, the report additionally emphasised the function of particular purposes in directing user activity on varied chains. As an illustration, many new Optimism customers have been lured to Worldcoin (WLD), indicating a long-term neighborhood curiosity in sure tasks:
“This outstanding statistic, together with Optimism’s low DeFi and NFT trading quantity relative to different noticed chains, could replicate a possible divergence between Optimism’s ecosystem evolution relative to different EVM chains.”