The Domino Effect - Important Events in 2022 to understand some spikes of activity/volume - to read meanwhile the charts are loading!

It’s difficult to trace when and why this year become bearish, but we can look at some historical events of 2022, to better understand the activity on the blockchains.

This is a timeline without links (except 1), because it might be more than a hassle than helpful, but feel free to investigate for yourself!.

• January 2022:
  • January 1 Tinyman was hacked
  • January 29 Qubit Finance was hacked
• February 2022:
  • February 2 Wormhole Bridge was hacked.
• March 2022:
  • March 23 Ronin Network was hacked.
• April 2022:
  • April 17 Beanstalk Farms was hacked.
• May 2022:
  • Terra Nework was in a really good moment, with both the LUNA (Governance Token) and UST (Terra Stablecoin), but their fall was preconceived, in May 7 UST suffers large amount of swaps dropping their price which forces the Luna Foundation Guard (The pilar of UST peg) to loan BTC and recover the UST price to 1$ but in the end the UST nevers pegs again which makes Luna price starts to crumble, in the end during May 12 Luna price reach a floor price and collapses.
  • In the end, the cryptocurrency economy suffers $300 billion in loses and the Terra Network developers forked their project as Terra 2.0 without UST this time, only LUNA.
• June 2022 :
  • June 6 Elrond was Hacked
  • June 12 Celsius Network freezes their activities.
  • June 16 Financial Times reported that Three Arrow Capital had failed to meet its margin calls, (3AC starts collapsing)
  • June 23 Horizon Bridge was hacked
  • June 27 Voyager Digital Issued a notice about 3AC failing to pay their Loans and the British Virgin Islands ordered the liquidation of Three Arrows Capital, followed by 3AC Filling their Bankruptcy.
• July 2022:
  • July 3 Celsius lays off about 23% of their workforce.
  • July 5 Voyager Digital filed their Bankruptcy.
  • July 7 DeFi Aggregator KeyFi files a lawsuit against Celsius.
  • July 12 Celsius transfers USDC to Aave.
  • July 13 Celsius Network filed their bankruptcy.
• August 2022:
  • August 2 Nomad Bridge was hacked.
• September 2022:
  • September 20 Wintermute was hacked.
• October 2022:
  • October 6 Binance bridge was hacked
  • October 11 Mango Markets was hacked
• November 2022:
  • November 6 FTX and Alameda are in peril after a coindesk article, days before which started a discussion in twitter between CEOs from these companies and Binance CEO.
  • November 8 FTX token starts to crash.
  • November 11 FTX filed their bankruptcy
  • November 12 FTX was hacked
• During 2022 there was a lot of hacks and all type of situations which trigger prices movements, but in the end it was Luna the most important event and the one which started the spark of bankruptcy for a lot of Companies

🏆 ⚽ Flipside World Cup Round - The Group Fase ⚽🏆

The World cup of bounties returns again, this time with a new challenge, track the USDC transfers across multiple chains, so before starting i want to talk about the parameters on this dashboard, these are four:

Date_Aggregation: Here you can choose how to see most of the data over time (days/weeks/months) are included. Blockchain: Here you can choose the blockchain you want to track.

Days_Before: How many days want to track back?, you can decide! is recommended to choose a good amount of days based on the Date_aggregation.

Event: Here you can choose a significant event during the 2022, to see how impacts on the USDC transfer, The date parameters don’t affect the events, all the events are by hour and during the significant days.

📊Dashboard Index📊

All the data is about USDC transfers!

• First ACT Blockchain Comparison: Here you can see the comparison between all blockchains based on the date parameters:
  • Senders - Receivers - Transfers - Volume of USDC transfers over time and their total metrics!.
  • Cumulative Metrics of the 4 metrics above but with Interactive charts!.
• 2nd ACT Parameter Blockchain over Reach, Retention & Revenue (RRR): Here you can see your selected blockchain over a business perspective!, with a writen analysis to understand the meaning of the charts, most of the charts here are based on date parameters!
• 3rd ACT Parameter Blockchain over Parameter Event: How the crypto incidents of 2022 affected the selected blockchain USDC transfer?, here you can see the hour-to-hour before and after important events!

I Hope you can have fun reading this dashboard and learn!, i tried my best to make an interesting dashboard, so i hope you can stay until the end!.

🔮Blockchain Presentations🔮

• Algorand: Released in April 2019, Algorand is a Layer-1 blockchain and the official blockchain of the Fifa NFTs, and $ALGO is their native token.
  • USDC Address.
  • Difficulty to Track USDC (Easy): Thanks to newly Algorand curated data tables of Flipside, tracking usdc is really easy, just using ‘USDC’ you can get all the data.
• Arbitrum: This project was co-founded in 2018, but it was in May 2021 when Arbitrum One opened to developers, this is a Layer-2 EVM blockchain over Ethereum and it doesn’t have a Native Token, so we’ll refer to $WETH as their native token (because is used as gas fee).
  • USDC Address.
  • Difficulty to Track USDC (Intermediate): Thanks to the curated data the only challenge is to scale their amount by decimal (6), and use the USDC Address.
• Axelar: Axelar was founded in 2020, but it was in February 2022 when their mainnet opens to the public as a Layer-1, the goal of this blockchain is use the “Crosschain” to connect all the blockchains, $AXL their native token went live in September 27 2022 alongside the Satellite Bridge.
  • USDC Address.
  • Difficulty to Track USDC (Intermediate): Thanks to the curated data, i’ll only need to scale their amount by decimal (6), but because of the differents contract address (it has a USDC contract for every blockchain connected), the better way to track usdc is by using ‘uusdc‘.
• Binance: Binance Smart Chain launched in September 2020 as a competitor of Ethereum with low fees as a Layer-1 Blockchain, their native token is the $BNB
  • USDC Address.
  • Difficulty to Track USDC (Intermediate): With the curated data, i’ll only need to scale their amount by decimal (18), and use their USDC contract.
• Ethereum: Ethereum launched on July 2015 and it is the most popular blockchain of the list, is a layer-1 with $ETH as their native token.
  • USDC Address.
  • Difficulty to Track USDC (Easy): With the nicely curated data, i’ll only need to sum their amount using ‘USDC’.
• Flow: Launched in early 2021 Flow is a layer-1 network, where the NFL & NBA NFTs Collections are present. Flow is their native token.
  • USDC Address.
  • Difficulty to Track USDC (Hard): Because USDC isn’t present in the transfers table, the only way to track USDC is by the events table using USDC address, but all the events are separated by “TokensDeposited” or “TokensWithdrawn”, although the amount is already scaled we need to prevent sum twice by transaction so i’ll divided by 2.
• Near: Launched in April 2020, this blockchain is a layer-1 different than the rest because their users are called citizens, and is trying to invest in a lot of social projects and their impact to the environment is really small with a certified climated neutrality, $Near is their native token.
  • Usdc Address.
  • Difficulty to Track USDC (Very Hard): Tracking tokens in Near is a challenge, because most of the assets doesn’t have a clear contract address, this is because USDC is a bridged token, to track USDC i’ll need to look at the transactions table and then navigate into the JSON of the tx, convert the string to integer and then scale their amount by Decimal (6).
• Optimism: Launched in December 2021 Optimism is a Layer-2 EVM, although the $OP is their native token Optimism still uses $WETH for their gas fees.
  • USDC Address.
  • Difficulty to Track USDC (Intermediate): Thanks to the curated table we only need to use USDC contract address and scaled their amount by Decimal(6).
• Osmosis: Launched in June 2021, this is a layer-1 DEX Focused blockchain, being the favorite place for users in the Cosmos Blockchain Environment to swap their assets. $OSMO is their native token.
  • USDC Address.
  • Difficulty to Track USDC (Intermediate): The challenge is to understand that the USDC used is axlUSDC (USDC bridged by Axelar bridge from Ethereum), after that we need to scale their amount by Decimal(6).
• Polygon: Launched in October 2017 as Matic Network initially, Polygon quickly become the layer-2 EVM favorite by the users, their native token is the $MATIC.
  • USDC Address.
  • Difficulty to Track USDC (Intermediate): Using their contract address and scale the amount by decimal(6) i can track the USDC.
• Solana: Launched in March 2020, and this layer-1 blockchain have the most numbers of transactions per block, with $SOL as their native token.
  • USDC Address.
  • Difficulty to Track USDC (Easy): Using the curated tables we only need to put in mint the USDC Address and their amount is already scaled.

⚔Blockchain Comparison⚔ First Act!

Please Wait until the charts load they’re busy counting the transactions! (the most demanding in time calculation)

Did you know that USDC was released in 2018?, founded by Circle with members of Coinbase and is managed by a consortium called Centre.

The Analysis here for part 1 was using a comparison by 365 days before

The number of Transfers can’t change too much overall, always Solana is going to have the most transactions followed by Polygon, both blockchains heavily used for their cheaper gas fees, Binance and Ethereum will be fighting the next place, followed by Arbitrum, Optimism and Algorand, after that will come Flow, Near and in the end Osmosis and Axelar.

The numbers of Senders will be a clash between Solana, Ethereum, Algorand and Polygon for the first places, followed by Binance, because Arbitrum data starts in Q2, their position will be in the middle clashing with Optimism, In last places will be clashing Near which have the advantage of starting with data from November 2021 vs Osmosis and Axelar which their data starts in March 21. Flow may be last place

The numbers of Receivers will be a clash between Solana, Ethereum, Algorand and Polygon for the first places, followed by Binance, because Arbitrum started later in 2022, their position will be in the middle clashing with Optimism, In last places will be clashing Osmosis and Axelar with a good growth over time and Near and Flow may be clashing for the latest places.

The Transfer Volume will be an easy win for Ethereum (being the place where the USDC is minted). Solana will come as second place in most cases, Polygon will clash with Binance, and Arbitrum, Optimism and Algorand will be clashing for the middle places, Near will clash with Flow and Osmosis vs Axelar will be the clash for last place.

The Average Transfer Volume will be an easy win for Ethereum (being the place where the USDC is minted). Solana will come as second place in most cases, and then Polygon, Binance, Near, Algorand, Osmosis, Arbitrum and Axelar will be the clashing. Flow and Polygon will clash for the last place.

🎥Interactive Cumulative Charts🎥 - Act 1 Highlights!

These Charts are animated over the time period the day Aggregation choosed, note that in the end of the animation only the top 10 are present, but during the timelapse you can see the 11 blockchains (You can pause before the end to see the 11).

🏆Most of the time the winners will be🏆

Cumulative Transfers: 🥇Solana 🥇

🥈 Polygon 🥈 🥉 Ethereum 🥉

Cumulative Senders: 🥇Solana 🥇

🥈 Ethereum🥈 🥉 Polygon🥉

Cumulative Receivers: 🥇Solana 🥇

🥈 Ethereum🥈 🥉 Polygon🥉

Cumulative Volume: 🥇Ethereum🥇

🥈 Solana🥈 🥉 Polygon🥉

These predictions are using a time period of 365 days

🔮Parameter Blockchain Over RRR Analysis🔮 - Act 2

This Analysis is using the tools learned from the 🔮Data Alchemist Boot Camp of Covalent🔮, The goal of these Metrics is to analyze a project over 3 main important business metrics.

Reach (Growing a User Base): Understanding where growth comes, how many transfers of USDC are per blockchain?, How many active Users?.

Retention (Retaining a User Base): Understanding the Health of the project, how many users keeps using these blockchains?, what is their retention?, How many existing vs new users are?

Revenue (Monetising a User Base): The most important aspect of a project is revenue growth, how much is the trading volume?, How is their growth over time?.

📣Reach Metrics📣

• Here we can see the daily transfers of USDC in the Selected Blockchain.

• Below is the total number of transactions over and the average.

• And below that is the Total Transactions vs Average transactions over time.

Above you can see Senders of USDC Over time ↑

←To the Left Total Receivers and Total Senders to the Right→

Below is the Receivers of USDC Over time ↓

Finally are the top 15 senders by number of transfers and their total percentage

🧲Retention Metrics🧲

• Here is the first Growth Rate, with that line you can know how much the transfers have increase or decreased in comparison with the previous day.

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• Because is necessary to have a previous day/week/month to compare, the inicial date will not appear.

• Always read the Growth Line as percentage!, 10 it means 10%, 200 it means 200%, -50 it means -50%

• Here is the first Existing Users & New Users vs New user percentage chart.

• The first date all the active users will be tagged as New users, which raise the percentage of new users to 100%, after that the active users will be tagged as existing users and now you can see clearly the “real” new users.

• Here you can see the Existing Senders of USDC vs New users which are sending USDC.

• Here are the Receivers & New receivers vs New Receiver Percentage

• This chart may be similar to the previous, but in general receivers are less than senders or otherwise?, i don’t know! because it’s depends on the day and the blockchain!.

• Which days the transfer activity spikes? well it’s depend on the events but usually Fridays seems to have Spikes in Transfer activity.

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• Although don’t be fooled, in all the days it can happens events which made spikes in activity and aren’t unrelated to the specific weekday.

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• But overall i can say that Friday&Thursday and Sunday&Monday are my elections to increase of transfers

• Now is time for some charts that aren’t date aggregated, that means we’ll visualize the same always, unless you change the blockchain!.

  \

• Stickiness ratio is a way to see how many monthly users are active daily over the month.

• Daily_Avg_Users/Monthly_Users is the formula to calculate stickiness ratio.

Remember this chart will always calculate the Stickiness ratio of 2022.

• I really love this Chart!, is so nice an clean and easy to understand 📊
• This is also another chart which always be about 2022 and is not date_aggregated.
• Here is the total amount of Daily Active Senders vs Weekly Active Senders vs Monthly Active Senders.
• Daily Active Senders: Is the average of all the daily active users during the month.
• Weekly Active Senders: Is the average of all the weekly active users during the month.
• Monthly Active Senders: Are all the users which send USDC at least 1 time in the month.

💰Revenue Metrics💰

• Here is the Native Token vs the Transfer Volume of USDC.
• At the start of the dashboard i’d introduced all the stablecoins for all the blockchains, the only special case is Arbitrum which doesn’t have a Native Token, so in that case i used $WETH.
• Note that some Native tokens were released on some blockchains time after their network went public.
  • Some examples on this year are $OP for Optimism and $AXL for Axelar.
• Usually if the price of the native token goes down, the trade of USDC goes up, and otherwise too!.
• Below is the Correlation Coefficiente, during all the period of time and date aggregated

• The Growth rate charts are back!, this time for Revenue, the growth chart can really help to see the increase or decrease on the trade volume, these numbers can go over the 100% percent or lower than -100%, because trade volume is more susceptible to big changes over day (in important events).
• So expect to see a bigger growth ratio in market crash days!.
• Also there is the total Transfer Volume below this chart, over the time period choosed.

• Trade Volume vs Average Volume is a good way to see how correlate are users trading USDC, most of the time these 2 lines correlate really good, but in some turbulent times the avg volume may be higher than the total volume, meaning that there is less users trading, so the average rises up, and when the average is lower it means more users are trading!

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• Also there is the total Average and Median Transfer Volume over the time period choosed.

Transfers are back! At your left are the transfers over day and at your right are the total transfers, but this time by amount transfered, so you can see over time periods how much USDC senders are sending, Usually the number must be higher to lower amounts, but in case of signficant events such as market crash, senders start to trade in more bigger amounts. Although Most of the bigger transactions are always made by aggregators, and normal users made most of the lowest transactions.

Now is time to see what are the transfers which provides more liquidity to the transfers over the days, here the numbers are higher to transfers with bigger amounts and is a good metric to compare how the dolphins/octopus (Over than 10k but below 1M) transfers are providing volume over the Aggregator/Humpwhale Transfers. Remember (Left To daily, Right to Total)

• Now is time for the Transfer Volume by weekdays!, in the transfer chart i talked about Fridays&Thursday - Sunday&Monday the day with most transfer activity.
• But it’s seems that for the Transfer Volume Fridays is the answer.
• Although we need to consider always the important events!, to understand better the activity.
• \

Now for the Senders by Transfer Volume, most of them must be aggregators of DEXes and DeFi, or the Mint/Burn Address for each Blockchain, although is nice to see the pie chart being as balanced as possible, that means the top 1 with 10%-20% only, which means a healthy blockchain with the aggregators contributing in the same ratio.

✨✨Now we’re reaching the end of the dashboard, but before you leave take a look to my Paramet Blockchain by Event charts!✨✨ - ACT 3

Here you can see some general metrics of USDC Transfer during important events in 2021, i tried to added a lot of them, they usually started 1 day before the incident and the duration is 2-3 days after the resolution of the incident, the charts here aren’t affected by Date! only Blockchain Parameter and Event Parameter!

• Here are Total metrics during the Event Duration, most of these events must presents some higher total numbers!
• During all the events specially the crashes, there is an active number of senders of USDC, raising the average amount of usdc.

• Overall i decided to include this space to see the impact of important dates over the transfer Activity of USDC.
• Hope you like this finals metrics!.

If the Native token wasn’t launched during the event the Hourly USDC Transfers vs Native token price charts might be blank, although i did a left join in Optimism and Axelar (the conflictive cases). Final Analysis at the end of these 4 charts

Select ASAP your parameters!, don’t try ‘day’ and days before = 365 (charts will not load).

📌You can select ‘week’ and days before = 365 (recommended for Blockchain Comparison, because the analysis is based on these aggregations), takes a bit to load but is going to load! 📌

Most of the Charts are linked to date aggregation and Days Before, Blockchain is for the 2nd and 3rd ACT of the Dashboard, and event is for the 3rd ACT of the Dashboard**.**

Only during these type of events we can see the presence of higher USDC Transfers over smaller, these type of events are the number 1 reason of the spikes on USDC transfers. Hope you may like these events charts!.

Summary

I tried my best to see the transfers of USDC in the most possible ways!, now is time to resume my analysis and answer the questions!.

• 📌Amount of USDC transferred📌: The volume of USDC is strongly linked to important events during the 2022, but if we look to a chain perspective:
  • Ethereum and Solana were the chains with most USDC Volume, during 2022, after these two Polygon and Binance are the next favorites.
  • Arbitrum data start some months later in 2022, but still presents higher USDC Volume, alongside Optimism.
  • Osmosis is the dark horse, It started later than the rest but the USDC volume in the latest months is really good, Axelar also benefits from Osmosis because all the USDC that reached Osmosis is Bridged By Axelar (Inter-Blockchain Protocol)
• 📌Average amount per transfer📌: The Average USDC Volume increases a lot during crash events, because most of the users trades in higher amounts!, now for a chain perspective:
  • Ethereum and Solana are again the favorites with most average USDC Volume, but this time Binance and Near have The most Average USDC Volume after the favorites.
  • Here is possible to see the dark horse Osmosis rising in Average Volume alongside Axelar, but to be honest the average seems higher because their user activity is lower in comparison to Polygon for example!.
  • Algorand Is my bet here!, Although i didn’t show too much in Total Amount, when looking at the Average USDC Transfer, Algorand is lower than Binance And Near only.
• With the Following Metric i can support my Algorand claim which is 📌Number of Senders of USDC📌.
  • Ethereum and Solana are the favorites Again, But this time is Polygon and Algorand which are the closest to the favorites!, Binance Follows with less users.
  • Arbitrum and Optimism, are the Next and then Axelar and Osmosis.
• In the end Ethereum and Solana are the Favorite Chains for USDC Transfers, after that i can claim that Algorand is the third one, and then 4th place must be tied between Polygon and Binance, Osmosis will be in a unfair race again Axelar always (because Axelar bridges the USDC), and Arbitrum/Optimism will be clashing always between them, Near it’s seems in a strange position and Flow in the last place.
  • Most of these analysis are from a 2022 Perspective.
• For a last 30 Days Perspective (i’ll be brief):
  • Solana Have the most transfers, but Ethereum have the highest Volume!, Algorand Have the most Senders.
  • Besides from these blockchains, Polygon - Arbitrum - Optimism and Binance, Presents good USDC Transfer Activity Overall.
  • It’s seems that Layer-1 which have more difficulty to move USDC have less activity, such as FLOW (they prefer the DUC Stablecoin), Osmosis-Axelar (Few USDC Transfers), and Near (Still have a better Average Volume than some less favorite Blockchains!!)
• 📌USDC usage patterns based on time and date📌
  • Using ACT 2 and ACT 3 charts analysis, i reached the conclusion that Fridays! is a good day for USDC Transfers, but in the end the Transfers are directly linked to Important Events in the crypto environment, such as Hacks/Crashs, but in a “perfect world” without these factor my guess is that Sunday&Monday and Thursday&Friday, are the weekdays with most Transfer Activity and USDC Volume
• 📌 Is USDC Correlated with Price Volume 📌
• YES!, in my first Revenue Chart we can see that when the price of the native token decreases the Total USDC transfer Volume tends to increase, and when the Token Price starts to increase, the Transfer Volume tends to decrease!, there is a lot of Heavy DEX traders which are waiting times when the Native token price tends to decreases to buy and sell in short, which provokes Aggregators to start transfering high amounts of USDC which can be spotted in the USDC Volume vs Native Token Price.

Methodology

• Using Flipside Data tables:
  • [Blockchain].transfers: For most of the blockchains, Near and Flow were the only problematic and i did use the jacktheguy method to track USDC in both.
  • Near.Transactions: For Near USDC Transfers.
  • Flow.Events: For Flow Events.
• This is my first dashboard i can say with pride that is my best work so far!, i tried to apply a lot of different thing i learned over my time as a Data Analyst!, so i hope you like all my effort and passion i put on this dashboard!.

Made by Popex404 - Twitter Link