Ethereum - Merry Christmas?

    Introduction

    In this Analysis, You will read about Ethereum users and their activities during the Holidays and the New year.

    • The holidays and New Year are often chaotic in the crypto and defi space, as users make a spree of new transactions and wallets as they receive (and give) some cash and coins as holiday gifts.

      How has this activity impacted the broader Ethereum ecosystems?

    • Are users creating new wallets or buying tokens with their newfound holiday wealth?

    • I created a dashboard that captures activity across metrics such as new users onboarding, token prices, NFT prices, or any other notable trends or events on the Ethereum chain.

    Analyzed by Hess - Reading Time Almost 12 Min.

    What is Ethereum?

    • Ethereum is a decentralized blockchain platform that establishes a peer-to-peer network that securely executes and verifies application code, called smart contracts. Smart contracts allow participants to transact with each other without a trusted central authority. Transaction records are immutable, verifiable, and securely distributed across the network, giving participants full ownership and visibility into transaction data. Transactions are sent from and received by user-created Ethereum accounts. A sender must sign transactions and spend Ether, Ethereum's native cryptocurrency, as a cost of processing transactions on the network.

    Source:

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    Transactions

    It is obvious that Ethereum has had so many old users since its launch. But If you want to find the share of new user’s transactions, You can see the chart below.

    • The Daily share of transactions by New wallets started at 12% in the middle of December, but day by day, The daily share of transactions by new wallets increased and reached 20% in January 2023. Almost 8% growth in less than 30 days.
    • On the Other side, The daily share of transactions by old wallets was 88% in December but decreased from 88% to 80% in January 2023.
    • The average number of transactions by new wallets was 148K per day before the New year and 193K in the New Year. It seems new users had more activities after the New year. Also, The average number of transactions by old wallets was 811K after and 839K before the New Year. So, old wallet activities didn’t change much after and before the New year.
    • Overall, Old wallets had 10.55M transactions and New wallets had 2.5M transactions since January 2023
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    Transfer Activities

    We want to know whether Ethereum users sent gifts in Crypto or not. Finding the answer is impossible, but let’s see new senders and receivers on the Ethereum chain in the last 30 days. Probably those new receivers are those that received gifts in Crypto.

    • Since January 2023, Ethereum had 423K new Senders and 1.2M new receivers.
    • The average number of new senders was 93K before the new year and 98K after the New year. Also, The average Number of new receivers was 38K before the New year and 32K in the New year.
    • The daily chart shows that the number of new receivers increased seven days after the New year. On January 1, The total number of new receivers was 94K, but on January 7 increased and reached 138K. On the other side, The highest number of new senders was before the Christmas Holidays.
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    New Users Activities On Ethereum

    In this section, I examined the total activities by new wallets on the Ethereum chain in the last 30 days and compared it before and after the New Year.

    • The highest number of new user activities was transfer. As you can see, The total daily number of transfer users has increased since January 1. However, The daily share of transfer transactions decreased after the New year. The daily share of transfer transactions in the middle of December was 85%, but after the New Year decreased to 75%. Which activity took the Transfer share? Based on the total daily share of transactions, The share of swaps increased from 8% to 13%. Also, I can see the share of NFT sales on the secondary market increased by 1%.
    • The average number of Mint NFTs, NFT sales, Swap, and transfer transactions in New Year was higher than in December. But the average number of Liquidity and stake transactions before the New Year was higher than the New year.
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    Top Swapped Tokens

    The swap was one of the top activities by new users in the last 30 days. The swap was one of the activities that increased after the New Year. Let’s see the top swapped tokens based on the total transactions and volume in USD.

    From Token:

    • WETH was the most popular swap from tokens based on the total number of transactions. The total number of WETH swaps was 136K before the New Year and 209K after the New year. It seems users gifted to themselves or other people WETH.
    • Based on the total swap volume, USDC and WETH were the top popular tokens. The swap volume of these tokens was above 200M US dollars.
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    Top NFT Collections

    Sales on the Secondary Market

    I tracked top NFT collections based on total sales volume and the number of transactions by New wallet.

    Based on Volume:

    • Board Ape Yacht Club was the most popular NFT collection before and after the New year. Mutant Ape Yacht Club, with 4.8M US, dollars was the second top collection before and after the New year. Moonbirds and Mfers was the top collection before the New year but they weren’t during the New Year. On other Other side, Board Ape kennel and PudgyPenguins were popular only after the New year.

    Based on Transactions:

    • The Opensea collection was the most popular collection before and after the New year. The Otherside and ENS were in next following place.
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    Top Transferred Tokens

    • The transfer was the most popular activity among new Users. I tracked top transferred tokens by new wallets. In the middle of December, USDT and ETH had the highest number of transfers but after New Year, The total ETH increased transactions increased and became the top transferred token.
    • ETH with 1.229M in New year and 1.225M transactions before the New year is the most transferred token. Insted of USDC, USDT is the second top transferred token.
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    Conclusion

    • Ethereum had 800K new users in the last 30 days. The average number of new users before and after the New year was similar.

    • BSC had the highest number of users compared to other chains. Ethereum was the third top chain.

    • Old wallets made 80% of transactions, and New Wallets made 20% of transactions.

    • Hop Protocol, Coinbase, and Uniswap were the top popular platforms that Ethereum users used in the last 30 days.

    • Ethereum had 1.2M Unique receivers and 423K new unique senders since January 2023.

    • The transfer was the most popular activity before and after the New year based on New user transactions. After that, I can mention Swaps, Mint NFTs, and Buy NFTs. Staking and adding liquidity had fewer transactions.

    • WETH and USDC were top-swapped tokens from and based on the total number of transactions and volume.

    • Bored Ape yacht Club and Opensea were top NFT collections on Secondary marketplaces.

    • Ledger and Coinbase were top-minted NFT collections.

    • ETH was the most popular transferred token based on the total number of transactions by the new wallets.

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    New Users

    As I mentioned before, We don’t have access to the creation date of wallets. I extracted the first transaction of users on Ethereum and assumed that date was a creation date.

    • After January 1, 2023, Ethereum had 841K new users who initiated their first Ethereum chain transaction. The average number of new users before the New Year was 65.3K, and after the New Year was 64.5K. The average shows the New users didn’t change too much.
    • Let’s examine the total daily number of new users in the chart. During the Holidays and New Year, The total daily number of new users didn’t change, but three days after the New Year increased to 148K new users.
    • In the following sections, I will examine New Users activities on Ethereum chain.
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    THANK YOU FOR READING!

    ALL CODES AND CONTENTS WERE WRITTEN BY HESS.

    :bird: Twitter: 0xhess

    :t-rex: Discord: hess#0890

    :calendar: Analyze Date: 2023/JAN/13

    Method

    • ETH Price

      • From the Hourly token price, I tracked the price of ETH and compared it with BTC and OP.
    • New Users

      • We don’t have access to the wallet creation date, But I used Min Function and extracted the first transaction of users. I used the date of the first transactions as the creation date.
    • Transactions

      • This part was simply because we have a Transactions table. To better understand new users’ activity, I divided Transactions by New and Old wallets.
    • Top Contracts or Projects

      • I joined my findings with DIM label tables. I joined to address with that table and extracted the project name from their address.
    • Activities

      • There are some key activities on each chain. I used some of them for this part. Swap, NFT sales, Minted NFTs, Liquidity, and transfers.
    • Top swapped Tokens

      • From the Fact Swap table, I analyzed the top swapped tokens from and to based on the total number of swaps and volume in USD.
    • Top NFT Collections

      • We do have mint and NFT sales tables on Flipside. I extracted the top collections from those tables based on the total number of transactions and volume of USD. To extract the collection names, I joined the NFT address to the address on the DIM label table.

    Full Analysis

    ETH Price

    There are so many tokens that I could compare with ETH's price. I selected BTC as a pioneer token and OP price as a native token of Optimism, A layer2 chain.

    • Until the Holidays and the beginning of the New Year, The price of these tokens didn’t have any specific change. But two days after the New Year, ETH, BTC, and OP prices started to pump. For a short time, The ETH growth was higher than OP and BTC, but after that, OP and BTC prices had better growth.

    I compared Ethereum's New users with other top chains. Like BSC, Polygon, Ethereum, Optimism, and Arbitrum.

    • Among these popular chains, Ethereum is in third place based on the number of new users.
    • BSC had the highest number of new users, with 1.9M new unique wallets in the last 30 days. BSC had almost 750K new users, higher than the Ethereum chain.
    • With 1.57M new Wallets, Polygon was the second top chain compared to other chains.
    • As I mentioned, Ethereum is in third place. Optimism and Arbitrum had the lowest number of new users.
    • Based on the daily chart, During the New Year, Ethereum had the highest growth in Number of new users compared to other chains.


    The below charts are based on activities by all wallets on Ethereum, not only the New wallets.

    • It is interesting that Hop Protocol still had the highest activities. Hop protocol, with 956K users in the last 30 days, was the most popular platform on Ethereum during the Holidays and New year. Hop had 32.3% of total users.
    • The second place is not Platform. It’s USDC token. This contract had 284K users in the last 30 days and had 25.7% of the share of users.
    • The third place is the Coinbase exchange. It seems 256K ( 9.59% of total users ) sent their tokens to Coinbase exchange. They Probably planned to sell their tokens and buy gift with fiat money.


    Based on Total volume in USD, Transfer activity had the highest volume made by new wallets. The total daily transferred volume increased in New Year. The highest volume transferred between January 1 and January 13.

    • The average transferred volume was 305M before the New Year and 390M after the New year. The second top activity was Swap. The average swap volume in USD was 77M in the Year, and it was 52M US dollars before the New year.
    • I drew some donut charts that show the share of users, Transactions and volume since January 1, 2023 that you can see in the below chart.

    New Users Breakdown

    • The large group of new users had only one transaction. The majority of this group of users had transfer transactions. 4.9% of this group of users minted NFT. Also, This group of users also transferred 868K US dollars in the last 30 days.
    • The behavior of new users was almost the same. But the group of users with more number of transactions, Had a higher share in Swap and NFTs.

    Top New Users

    I extracted the top users for each category based on the total number of transactions.

    • Swap users had a higher number of transactions compared to other categories. Interestingly, two top transfer users were top swap users too.
    • After these two categories, Minted NFT users had a higher number of transactions. Top users of Liquidity and Stake had a lower number of transactions.


    To Token:

    • Based on the Total Number of transactions, WETH still is the top popular token that users swap to. The total number of swaps to WETH was 90K before the New year, and the total number of swaps to WETH after the New year was 137K.
    • Based on the total swap Volume, The most popular token was USDC. USDC swap volume was 312M US dollars before the New year, and it was 256M US dollars after the New year. WETH had similar volume with USDC and it was in the second place.

    Top new NFT Purchasers

    Interestingly, the top NFT purchaser before the New Year differed from the top NFT purchaser after the New Year based on the total number of transactions.

    • Only two users were Top NFT purchasers before and after the New year. The top NFT buyer after the new year purchased 607 NFTs and The top NFT buyer before the New year purchased 387 NFTs.

    Top Minted Collections

    • As You can see, Uniswap had the highest number of mints and minted volume, but Uniswap is not like other collections. With adding Liquidity, Uniswap mint NFT for each position. So, I ignore the Uniswap collection.

      Based on Volume:

      Before New Year Was Cameo with a 6K Mint Volume and after New year was Ledger with 288K US dollars.

      Based on Transactions:

      • Before the New year Ledger with 481 mints was the top collection and after the New year was Coinbase with 515 mints.