Dune Digest #66
Optimism Quests, BNB Validators, NFT Incentives & MORE!
GM
Welcome to Issue #66 of Dune Digest
We are back to our usual program of data, dashboards & Wizardry this week - and some exciting dashboards have been released.
Let’s get right into them, and see what wizards have been cooking up for us this time……
Optimism Quests Growth
Optimism Quests is an initiative that takes users through various apps on the platform, teaching them how to make use of them in exchange for commemorative NFTs.
It’s a smart marketing and educational initiative designed to onboard new users to the ecosystem. Does it work?
A new dashboard by @oplabspbc takes a look at app growth post-Quests, let’s explore.
The dashboard takes a 30 day period before Quests as a baseline, then compares it with 30 days post-Quests to evaluate growth. So far, there are only 8 days post-quests measured, so the real figures will be far higher once 30 days have passed…..
Many apps that participated in quests saw huge usage growth of 150%+ already:
Active addresses also more than doubled, both for Quests apps and Optimism in general:
Transaction fees have also shot up in a similar pattern!
Overall Quests seem to have had a very positive impact. Apps that participated in the scheme typically saw a significant surge in usage and volume - and the Optimism platform in general has seen strong growth.
Actually, general Optimism growth (56%) has so far outpaced the growth of specific Quests apps (32%):
So we can see that Optimism has experienced explosive growth since Quests. How much of this is specifically due to Quests is hard to say, but the trend is very strong and implies a successful initiative.
This will be an interesting dashboard to revisit in a few weeks when we can compare the two 30 day periods - the stats will no doubt be far more impressive!
Check out the full dashboard for more…..
BNB Validators
BNB is the largest smart contract chain by active users, and since 2020 has become an important part of the wider DeFi world.
It initially gained traction as a fast and cheap alternative L1 in a period when Ethereum gas fees were becoming particularly prohibitive.
BNB is indeed fast, and transaction fees are low. Critics point out though that to achieve this efficiency and scale, tradeoffs were made in terms of decentralization.
Is this accurate?
According to the blockchain trilemma - increasing scalability, security, or decentralization typically requires a tradeoff in one of the others.
Let’s look into BNB’s system with a new dashboard by team @impossiblefinance…..
In a recent article on the Dune blog, @soispoke explained the BNB concensus mechanism as follows:
“The BNB chain relies on the combination of two consensus mechanisms: Proof-of-Authority (PoA), a mechanism in which a designated number of blockchain validators (21) take turns to validate transactions and produce blocks, and Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS), meant to increase decentralization and favor community governance by allowing token holders to vote and elect the limited validator set”
How many validators are there? According to the dashboard:
You may have heard that Ethereum recently passed 500k validators, so there’s really a stark difference here.
The top 5 have validated over 1 million blocks, with Fuji currently in the top spot followed by DeFibit and NodeReal:
We can also see that though traditionally there were 21 validators, this changed in Q4 of ‘22, with the number making several jumps to the current 29.
The composition of validators can also change on a daily basis, though remains broadly consistent:
So with 29 validators, it’s clear that BNB cannot claim to be as decentralized as some of its competitors. That said, its success should probably tell us that for many, some degree of centralization is an acceptable tradeoff for a good UX!
There’s a lot more in this dashboard - including interesting stats on validator activity, blocks and more. Check it out to learn more!
Porsche NFTs
As we know, many retail brands have done well with NFTs over the past few years.
The latest to experiment is Porsche, who announced the mint of its first collection on Monday. Each NFT is a digital replica of the iconic 911, with a mint price of 0.911 $ETH.
This caused some controversy. A $1400+ mint price? In this economy?
According to a new dashboard by @Eclipse, originally there were 7500 total NFTs to mint. Almost 1200 were minted on Monday alone before the action slowed to a crawl by the second day:
To make matters worse, many NFTs started to sell for below the mint price on the secondary market. It looked like a bit of an emerging train wreck.
On Tuesday though, Porsche announced that they would halt the mint early, wrapping up at 2363 total NFTs. This revived some interest in the mint which concluded on Wednesday.
In total, 2,153 $ETH was raised by 1405 unique minters.
Cutting the mint short seemed to create some kind of supply shock, because the floor price quickly shot up along with volume and sales. The floor currently sits at 2.670 $ETH!
Overall trading volume has exceeded 2348 $ETH - mostly going down on Opensea and Blur.
Overall a slightly strange event, and not as professional as one might expect from a brand like Porsche. That said, it is their first attempt at web3, and from the early minter’s perspectives it has been a success so far.
It’s unclear whether the mint will be reopened for the remaining 5,137 NFTs, but you can get a load more stats by checking out the full dashboard.
NFT Marketplace Incentives
As the NFT marketplace space has become ever more competitive, some of the major players have tested out various schemes to boost usage & volume.
@Marcov investigates them in a new dashboard……
One of the first was LooksRare offering listing rewards in early Q2 of 2022. We can see that there was indeed a large spike in listings and volume for the duration of the reward period:
Next the dashboard moves on to Blur, finding that their similar reward scheme didn’t have a noticeable effect on listings, but did occur prior to a significant boost in volume:
Blur also saw success with its incentives around batch buys.
Next @Marcov looks at Uniswap’s gas refund offered to users of its NFT platform for the first 2 weeks of December.
Interestingly, the promotion had almost no effect on transactions, but did seem to have a weak effect on volume:
Overall, listing rewards look like the most successful strategy so far.
Marketing in Web3 & crypto is still a nascent field though. All kinds of protocols are still experimenting with different promotional strategies to attract users, but there are few definitive best practices for now.
For more, check out the full dashboard!
Rollbit
It has been a while since we covered an on-chain casino, but gambling remains one of the most popular use cases for crypto so far!
A new dashboard by @dcfpascal covers Rollbit, a platform which allows users to deposit $BTC, $ETH & $SOL to play games like slots, table/arcade games and more.
Over $50m worth of assets are currently deposited on the platform:
Over 90% of deposits are in $BTC. There’s a significant amount $ETH on the platform too though, with deposits peaking in early Q3 of ‘22 before dropping until 2023 when they surged again:
Unique depositors of $ETH also grew steadily through 2022 and have been at >1k daily for the past month:
At the same time $BTC balances are stable, along with $BTC depositors.
Overall the platform seems to be healthy, with $ETH depositors in particular showing strong growth. Online gaming and gambling are both huge industries which have only begun to be disrupted by crypto - so it’s an interesting area to keep an eye on.
Check out the full dashboard for more!
More Dashboards
GN
Thank you for reading this issue of Dune Digest
A special thanks to all contributing Wizards!
We’ll see you again next week for more Data, Dashboards & Wizardry
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