DappRadar explains why it counted less than 40 active users on Decentraland

Published at: Oct. 13, 2022

Crypto Twitter was shocked by reports claiming a $1.2 billion metaverse ecosystem like Decentraland has less than 40 daily active users recently. The data, courtesy of decentralized finance (DeFi) analytic firm DappRadar, created quite a buzz among the crypto community, with questions being raised over the future of Web3.

Decentraland was quick to refute those metrics and claimed that to get a better insight into the platform’s user activity; one should refer to the dashboard on the website. The metaverse platform noted that it accounted for 1,074 users interacting with smart contracts in September and a total of 56,697 monthly logged-in users.

Let's have a look at some of September's data:56,697 MAU1,074 Users interacting with smart contracts1,732 minted Emotes6,315 sold Wearables300 Creators received royalties161 created Community Events 148 DAO Proposals

— Decentraland (@decentraland) October 7, 2022

DappRadar since clarified how the team reached that number and noted that it's currently working with the metaverse platform to offer a more accurate data set. The data analytic firm said that it tracks the number of Unique Active Wallets (UAW), the number of transactions and the volume of those transactions across different decentralized applications (DApps).

DappRadar noted that its user data tool only tracks users’ interaction with a blockchain, usually in the case of transactions, but often non-blockchain-based activities go untracked. For example, Axie Infinity's daily active user count is well over 100,000, while DappRadar measures only 20,000 UAW per day through on-chain data.

The DeFi analytic firm acknowledged that the metaverse is a fast-growing ecosystem, and it solely depend on developer data for calculations. The firm is now working with Decentrland developers to offer a better insight into daily active users on the platform. The official blog post from DappRadar read:

“The key metrics DappRadar provides are based on smart contracts, which are mainly submitted by DApp developers. The Decentraland team is currently updating their list of smart contracts, and we’re therefore recalculating their metrics.”

While DappRadar user data might not be accurate, there is a certain decline in interest around Web3 ecosystems, including the much-hyped metaverse one. Even the most thriving projects are facing unprecedented pressures in the current bear market.