FLOW User Retention vs Other Chains
Introductions
What is Flow?
Flow is a blockchain platform that originally was designed for gaming purposes, but has expanded since its launch in 2020. The flow blockchain enables fast, low-cost transactions and supports smart contracts. It powers blockchain applications including NBA Top Shot, a non-fungible token (NFT) offering.
What is user retention?
Customer retention refers to the ability of a company or product to retain its customers over some specified period. High customer retention means customers of the product or business tend to return to, continue to buy or in some other way not defect to another product or business, or to non-use entirely.
What is a L1 blockchains?
A Layer-1 blockchain is the base level of the blockchain architecture. Layer-1 blockchains validate and execute transactions without support from another network, and reimburses transaction fees with cryptocurrencies.

Methodology
The needed data regarding user retention on Flow was extracted via mainly using the table flow.core.fact_transactions
for new and active users on Flow and comparing it to Ethereum ethereum.core.fact_transactions
and Solana solana.core.fact_transactions
and as for the NFT’s user retention on the mentioned L1 ecosystems, the schema _core.ez_nft_sales
was used, all of these tables were provided by Flipsidecrypto database and to make these raw extracted data more comprehensible all types of proper charts and graphs were utilized.
What is analyzed in this analysis?
- User retention on Flow, Solana and Ethereum
Gained users on L1 chains
Active users in correlation
Wallet activities on L1 chains
- NFT user retention on Flow, Solana and Ethereum
- Most of the users(48%, 4.3M) on Flow have their wallets active for 2 month followed by 34%, 3M which stay active for a month and 9% are active for 3 month and only around 2.7K of the users are active more than 2 years.
- 10M, 69.9% of the active user on Solana have their wallets active for a month followed by 22% of the users being active for 2 month and only less than 200 users being active for more than 2 years.
- 62%, 97M of the users on Ethereum only stayed active for a month followed by 34M who stayed active for 2 month and 6.6% which stayed active after their created wallet after 3 month and only 1.3K of the users stayed active for more than 5 years.
- On all of the analyzed chains most of the users hold their NFTs for less than 1 week for example 23.8%, 43.6K of the NFT holders on Flow held their pieces between 2-7 days followed by 38K holding less than 1 hour and only 13K of users holding more than 1 month.
- Since other than Ethereum second largest holding period on Flow and Solana is less than an Hour it could indicate that the two mentioned chains have more traders and NFT flippers centered market places rather than holders this could be due to more valuable NFTs being available on Ethereum as well.
Conclusion
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Majority new users gained by Flow chain was in 2022 with months June(3M) and July(1M) having the most new users brought into the platform for Solana Jan and Apr 2022 and as for Ethereum April and May 2021 saw the most new users gained on the platform but the momentum of this newly gained users on the all three platforms started to decrease after second half of 2021 following the general crypto market crash.
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Seems that Flow have relatively more loyal and dedicated users with around half of the users on the platform being active for 2 months compared to the other two which more than 60% of their users were inactive after a month.
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NFT enthusiasts seems to lean more toward holding their NFTs compared to Flow and Solana but on all of he platforms around quarter of the users held their pieces between 2-7days.
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Seems that Flow becoming the place for sport NFTs 2022 helped this relatively young and not yet as widely adopted blockchain compared to the other two, is doing a decent job retaining and creating a loyal user base all of this was while most of Flows lifespan was under a more than a year long bearmarket so its full potential is yet to be discovered.
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Thank you for your time!
- Since the launch of Flow in late 2020 it recorded most of its user activities in 2022 with Nov recording ATH of 5.4M user and close to the 5.6M active users recorded by the behemoth of a chain, Ethereum.
- From 2020 number of active users was increasing on Ethereum but it dropped since second half of 2021 which it recorded the most active users in month on May 2021 with 7.9M active users.
- Seems that after second half of 2021 Flow especially Solana started to eat into the monthly active users of Ethereum but is was some what reversed in the last month of 2022 with Flow losing its 5.4M active users to just 100K by now.
- Ethereum with a total of 200M active users was the chain with the most active users since 2020 followed by Solana 30M and Flow chain had the least active users among the analyzed chains with 18.6M.
Active users in correlation
What is required from this analysis?
How sticky are the users on Flow?
Create a detailed analysis comparing user retention on Flow vs. other L1 chains like Ethereum and Solana. How often do users who make a transaction come back and make another transaction one month later? How do monthly active users compare between chains?
Bonus: add a section of your analysis comparing retention specifically with regard to NFT purchases. How often do users who purchase an NFT come back and make another purchase one month later?
- Most of the users were introduced to Flow mostly in 2022 and first 5 months of 2021, 2021 the time period after the mentioned jump in the new users on the platform and Q2, 2022 could be named as time frame which Flow started to lose the hype surrounding it after that it Flow started to gain more new users which peaked to 3M users in Jun that it started declining.
- Overall Ethereum was more stable chain in term of user attracting and had the higher average new users each month compared to other two with a gradual increase to number of new users from beginning of 2020 till it reached its peak on Apr 2021 with 4.9M new users gained in a month after that number of new users started to decrease. Most of the users joined Solana in the first half of 2022 with Jan 202 having the most recorded new users in a month with 1.88M after that number of new users started to decline.
Gained users on L1 chains
Wallet activities on L1 chains