Key Insights:
Crypto markets witness unprecedented activity at 220 million users, 3x higher than what the figures were in Dec 2023.
The high user activity could be attributed to a wide market rally in memecoins.
Ethereum, Solana, and Base emerged as the top three platforms for projects and blockchain developers.
Among geographies, Nigeria, India, and Argentina contributed the highest number of users.
As the market reaches its new all-time highs, we see an equally high market activity. A report by A16Z revealed that last month, in September, crypto markets saw a 200% growth in market activity just in nine months. This market activity was at least three times higher than what we saw in December 2023.
A total of 220 million users interacted with at least one blockchain. Barely 10 months ago this was around 65 million users. The growth in numbers were possibly due to the rallies that have taken Bitcoin and most other cryptos to new heights.
The largest crypto, Bitcoin saw a growth from $44,000 to $73,000 within that timeframe. There were also some unique coins like Bonk that grew around 10,000% each. Among large-cap cryptocurrencies, Solana saw the highest growth from $74 to $200.
These large growth figures were the actual reason that pulled new buyers and investors to the markets.
Among the new users, the majority hailed from developing countries like Nigeria, India, and Argentina.
Among all blockchains, Solana turned out to be the most popular, despite being far lower than Ethereum in many criteria like TVL, on-chain market cap, token market cap, on-chain liquidity, Dapp count, DeFi protocol and others.
The factor that was responsible for such a high growth rate in Solana was the phenomenal rallies in its memecoin and altcoin markets. Some Solana memecoins like Bonk grew over 100x or 10,000%.
Even older SOL memecoins like POPCAT didn't miss out on the rallies and saw an astounding 8300% growth.
The growth was so high that despite losing two-thirds of their gains by September 2023, memecoins were still the best performing sector in the year.
Another sector that has seen rising interest rates is RWAs. Here too, Solana tried its best to bag decent user interest. The Solana blockchain added new features to its chain like Permissioned Environments, Token Extensions, and KYC, all critical features necessary for RWAs to operate.
If you are wondering if these features make Solana more compliant to laws and censorships, it certainly does not. These are project-specific features that RWA projects need to create their platforms on Solana. Since RWA is a bridge between TradFi and DeFi, it has very high regulatory compliance standards as compared to other projects.
A surprising winner in the crypto lottery was the Base layer-2 blockchain by Coinbase. It was the third largest blockchain in terms of number of users after Solana(100 million) and Near(31 million).
It might seem surprising to many that Base has almost 66% more users than Ethereum, but the Layer-2 blockchains were built for this specific purpose only. Base processes low-value transactions and hence has a high transaction number. Most high-value crypto transactions still take place via Ethereum.
Base is known to process an average of 5 million transactions per day. The high number of users preferring Base is due to two very important factors. First, Base does not have its own token, it accepts ETH for gas fees, which is obviously very low due to Base being an L2. Second, Base is backed by Coinbase, the second-largest crypto exchange globally and the largest in the US.
Base Blockchain Explorer Showing Transaction Data
BaseScan
Base doesn't have to earn money to sustain chain operations like Arbitrum or Polygon. The Coinbase exchange can easily subsidize gas fee on Base, prompting higher adoption.
A high growth in users would only follow if there is a higher growth in developmental activity. Among all chains, Ethereum was the top blockchain that got the most developer interest at 20.8%.
Other runner-ups were Solana (11.2%), Base (10.7%), Polygon (7.9%), Optimism (6.7%), and Arbitrum (6.2%). Cardano, despite having high developmental activity, it did not find a place among the top 10.
Disclaimer: Voice of Crypto aims to deliver accurate and up-to-date information, but it will not be responsible for any missing facts or inaccurate information. Cryptocurrencies are highly volatile financial assets, so research and make your own financial decisions.