==Introduction==

The time for a journey to the City of Near has come once again. Today, we will be investigating what most users do after they successfully bridge to Near - do they used DEXs to swap their assets, do they come to the City to buy a piece of art in the form of an NFT, or do they simply just want to stake their tokens in hopes of multiplying their money? The answer to these questions, as well as a few other insights, such as bridging into Near or from Near to Ethereum and Aurora using the one and only Rainbow Bridge will be explored in this analysis. So, let’s get ready for our journey! 🏙️

-- ==Time to prepare for the Journey== --

Remember the famous City of Near? I hope you will enjoy your next journey through the City, as together we will explore some interesting sights. The agenda of the trip is as follows:

1. Part One: Firstly, everyone needs to get to the City somehow - the fastest way - the Rainbow Bridge. Without it, the City wouldn’t exist, so it’s important that we spend a portion of our time exploring what is hidden under the Bridge.
2. Part Two: After a successful trip, it is time to enjoy what the City has on offer. Let’s investigate what users are doing the most, by looking at some of the most popular categories, such as spending time in the Financial District, or the Arts District.
3. Part Three: As they say, time flies when you’re having fun! Sadly, the time has come to leave the City of Near - the last steps that we take together on this journey will be again on the Rainbow Bridge, as we remark on the beautiful sights we have seen on our trip!
4. Conclusion: Wrapping it all up, summarising what do users do when they as soon as they get in the City of Near and what are the favourite places to go to while visiting the City of Near.

-- ==Part One of the Journey: Bridging into Near== --

Pack your backpack, fasten the seatbelt and relax - you will soon arrive at the City of Near!

Key findings:

• The average bridged amounts per transaction and per user are pretty large, which signifies the presence of whales in the ecosystem, who increase both of these averages.
• Near travellers mostly buy their bridging tickets with USDC , USDT and DAI, as these are the tokens bridged the most when it comes to the number of transactions or the $ volume.
• Key inflow dates ~ 25 Oct 2021 and Apr 9-26th, where a lot of users bridged through Ethereum to Near.

-- ==Part Two of the Journey: Sightseeing== --

Welcome to the City, you have officially made it! Now, it’s time to sightsee and explore what the City has on offer… But there are so many things to do and see! What are some of the most popular actions taken by other travellers once they successfully bridge to Near?

First action post bridging interactions by contract/group of contracts

In this section we’re looking at the top 30 contracts, some grouped, others not, that users interacted within their first transaction post bridging into the Near ecosystem from Ethereum via the Rainbow Bridge. What we can see is that Ref Finance the biggest DeFi protocol on Near - it is the number one place for users to visit, and we have seen in the previous round of this tournament how Ref Finance is doing in general. Then it’s the wNear (wrapped NEAR) token as well as the Bridge, potentially for users to go to Aurora. Further down the line we can see Burrow, another DeFi application that users tend to interact with alongside the Aurora token.

In terms of market share, Ref Finance is the most interacted with contract, with ~28% of first user actions post bridging into the ecosystem. One could say that Ref Finance is driving the ecosystem the same way Aave and Uniswap are driving ecosystems like Ethereum, Polygon, Avalanche and others - which really is something! 🏆

Looking at each contract specifically gives us a good idea of what users are doing - but what about a more general view, which would allow us to look at actions per category?

-- ==Part Three of the Journey: Leaving the City== --

After a day full of adventures, it is time to say goodbye to the City of Near. 😔 But what’s next? Where to head after a day full of fun? Let’s look at the most popular destinations for bridging from Near to other networks.

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• Dashboard (and artwork created for the purpose of this bounty) by -pine-nat-#4310
• Twitter:
• Refresh Rate - Daily
• Data from FlipsideCrypto

==Conclusion==

This dashboard has investigated what newcomers do, when they bridge into Near. We have looked into all three parts of the journey - from the exciting beginning of bridging to the City of Near using the famous Rainbow Bridge, to leaving the City and wondering where to head next. We have found out that users love the Financial District, especially Ref Finance, which seems to be the top first DeFi protocols that Near newcomers are very attracted to. We have also seen that users like to interact with tokens in general after bridging, as well as use platforms Play to Earn.

Other categories, such as the Arts District or DAOs are not so popular when it comes to the first actions after bridging to the City of Near.

The City of Near keeps surprising us with its beautiful sights. I am very curious as to what else we could find by investigating other parts of the City - are you? 🤠

Key findings:

• There is a lot more bridging action happening between Near and Aurora than to/from Ethereum, which is interesting. What does it imply? One assumption that can be made here is that once users bridge to Near, they don’t leave the network, but instead stay and play around in the ecosystem, by switching to Near and Aurora and vice versa.
• The overall trend when it comes to bridging transactions and unique users is on a big decline - but once the turbulent markets become more stable, the popularity of bridging should resume!

First action post bridging interactions by category

In this section we’re looking at the most popular contracts grouped by category, that users interacted within their first transaction post bridging into the Near ecosystem from Ethereum via the Rainbow Bridge. What we can see here is that DeFi is the core driver for users to bridge over. This is no surprise as high APYs and liquidity incentives are definitely a way to make people interested in bridging over to get some free $. The next biggest category is Tokens, that is also expected as transfers, swaps, staking/unstaking and other related actions would show up under Tokens. The third biggest one is Bridge or rather bridging events; these events could be back to Ethereum or just going to Aurora to enjoy the ecosystem there with even lower fees. Play to Earn and NFTs have yet to pick up steam for newcomers it seems - although the decrease in the Arts District could be caused by the Bear market, and we can be hopeful that the popularity of NFTs for newcomers to Near will increase once the world stabilises a little bit more.

When looking at the daily chart, we can see that there’s confluence in at least the transaction volume post-bridging around the Apr 9-26th dates, but we can see that some users transacted first, post bridging, a lot later ~ around May, as the date that is being truncated here is the date at which the first transaction took place, post-bridging from Ethereum into Near (and not what we see in the earlier section).

NOTE: Other (N/A Not looked into/labeled) are contracts/wallets that I could not find much information about, or a nice regex like way to include them in the analysis and I did not want to assume that they are wallets.