Ethereum and Polygon preserve their lead over newer Ethereum Digital Machine (EVM) chains in drawing new customers and rising buying and selling 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 full 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 spanking new customers, with Ethereum main in buying and selling quantity at $12 billion in Q1.
Moreover, the upward development of defi exercise contrasted with the earlier yr’s intermittent, unstable swings, indicating a rising curiosity and participation in DeFi amongst novices within the blockchain area.
Arbitrum ranked second on the record, with a $9.5 billion acquire because the starting of 2024. The Flipside report attributes this milestone to elevated new consumer exercise in Arbitrum’s defi area. In distinction, Polygon’s excessive new consumer numbers are ascribed to a rise in non-fungible token (NFT) exercise.
With a file 243,000 new customers as of March 16, Base has almost octupled its new consumer base since January, owing to Coinbase’s efforts to simplify cryptocurrency for novices.
“Whereas this nonetheless places Base far behind the main EVM chains when it comes to total new consumer quantity, it nonetheless represents spectacular progress, notably because the chain’s exercise waned in the course of the ultimate 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 consumer rely amongst EVM chains this yr.
Demonstrating variety, a good portion of newly registered customers work together with an assortment of decentralized functions (dApps) on Ethereum. Nonetheless, the evaluation discovered that Ethereum didn’t have essentially the most evenly distributed app adoption among the many six analyzed chains.
“This distinction goes to Base, the place the distinction in new consumer quantity between the chain’s 1 and a pair of apps was solely 16.9%, in comparison with Ethereum’s ~300%.”
“The truth that Base is comparatively new probably lowered early protocols’ first mover benefit and consequent community results, stopping consumer consolidation round a single app.”
Token swaps and bridging apps are the commonest entrance factors for brand spanking new customers on EVM chains, with Uniswap and Orbiter Finance main the best way on Ethereum and Base, respectively.
As revealed by extra insights within the Flipside report, NFT buying and selling exercise throughout EVM chains painted a muddled image.
New consumer NFT buying and selling 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 within the upcoming cycle as that they had prior to now.
Furthermore, the report additionally emphasised the function of particular functions in directing consumer exercise on varied chains. For example, many new Optimism customers had 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 buying and selling quantity relative to different noticed chains, could replicate a possible divergence between Optimism’s ecosystem evolution relative to different EVM chains.”