Introduction

NEAR is a rich ecosystem with a variety of interesting platforms built on the network. Ref Finance, The Rainbow Bridge, Burrow, Paras, ZoomLand… the list is almost endless! But how do you even get to explore all of these amazing platforms, especially if you are just beginning your journey to the City of Near? This dashboard will focus on the fundamental metrics first when it comes to bridging into Near - without the bridge, not many users would be able to join the Near ecosystem, meaning that a bridge is an essential part of the network. Near is a fairly new network and therefore the ability to bridge to and from other ecosystems is a crucial part of establishing Near’s growth. Once we understand how many users bridge to Near, and what do they do right after they begin their Near journey, then we will be able to see how much potential they see in the network, as well as in Near’s products themselves - which will be further analysed in other dashboards. So, let’s begin our journey through the City of Near!

What is the Rainbow Bridge?

The ETH ↔ NEAR Rainbow Bridge opens the gates for assets to flow freely between NEAR and Ethereum blockchains while enabling users to bridge any ERC-20 token they wish. Transfers between NEAR and Aurora require a single transaction, cost a few cents and happen instantaneously. On the other hand, transfers to Ethereum, involve two transactions—the kick-off on Aurora or NEAR, and the finalization on Ethereum. The finalization can take up to 16 hours, and its cost will depend on gas prices at that time, and are therefore unpredictable, depending on the congestion of the network.

The calculations do not include the Current Date as it will always be incomplete until the day ends.

Key insights:

• The TVL of the bridge seems to be on a constant decline - which could be caused by the fear present within the markets. However, we can see which tokens are the most popular amongst users who bridge to Near - with the Aurorian token having seen the most volume!

• 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.

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?

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.

Conclusion

This dashboard has investigated some of the key metrics for the Rainbow Bridge, the tool chosen by many users to bridge their assets into the Near ecosystem. We have also seen what newcomers do, when they bridge into Near, with the key idea being that new Near users seem to love the Financial District, especially Ref Finance, which as of now is the top first DeFi protocol that Near newcomers are very attracted to. We have only looked into the first part of the journey - the exciting beginning of bridging to the City of Near using the famous Rainbow Bridge, the next step is to look more closely at other platforms that exist within the ecosystem, in order to unleash Near’s full potential!

Finished analysing the Rainbow Bridge? Go back to the guide, to explore other parts of the City of Near!

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