Introduction

Flow blockchain is a fast, decentralised, developer-friendly PoS-based blockchain from NFT pioneer Dapper Labs that aims to provide high scalability to the next generation of Dapps without the use of complex scaling techniques such as fragmentation.

Flow's architecture addresses performance limitations by fundamentally changing the way the blockchain is formed. This is done by splitting the rule of validator nodes. Flow uses pipelining techniques used by modern CPUs.

Flow applies the pipelining technique by separating the jobs of a validator node into four different roles: collection, consensus, execution and verification. For each role, a minimum participation deposit is required from each of the participating nodes. All these nodes work in parallel to perform their required actions. Each validating node still participates in the validation of each transaction, but does so only in one of the validation stages.

The important feature of Flow is that it features updatable smart contracts. In most smart contract blockchains, the code of the contract could never be changed after it is launched. They become immutable and even the developer cannot change the state outside their predefined scope and, more importantly, cannot change the code.

This is a problem, as nobody can write perfect code without testing it in real operation. Flow allows smart contracts to be implemented on the main grid in a "beta state", where the original authors can incrementally update the code.

Methodology

In this dashboard we are explore the top 10 most popular contracts used on Flow Blockchain and what other types are trending over the past weeks. As well, we will try to assess why people are using it. To carry out the analysis, we will use the new Flow database available on Flipside Crypto and we will take data from May 9th.

Source:

• 1. Flow Documentation
• 2. Flow Blockchain

Results

In this first donut, we can see the top 10 contracts used since May 9th taking into account the number of transactions involved. It is clear that the most contracts used are both, FlowFees and FlowToken. It seems these contracts are linked due to they have the same percentage of share and then, the same number of transactions involved (38.5%). The FlowToken refers to the FLOW network token, then it involves each transaction related to FLOW token. The FlowFees is the fees paid when transacts on the blockchain.

Another important contract is the LNVCT contract, representing around 7.31% of the top 10 transactions, this contract is related to the Non-Fungible Tokens, then every transaction related to NFTs. Another important percentage is covered by TopShot contracts, the NBA Top Shot transactions that brings the best plays of basketball to users as collectibles on the blockchain.

Furthermore, in the 6th position we have the TokenForwarding contract that shows how an account could set up a custom FungibleToken Receiver to allow them to forward tokens to a different account whenever they receive tokens. Finally, there are other important contracts like DapperUtilityToken, NFTStorefront, FLOAT or TenantService, that have a smaller percentage of popularism aamong Flow activity.

These two charts shows the evolution of the number of transactions and the percentages of the top contracts used. For this approach, I have selected only those contracts with more than 10k daily transactions. We can see how FlowToken and FlowFees have been gaining popularity over time. In contract, NFT contracts like LNVCT or TopShot/TopShotMarketV3 decreased their popularism.

Finally, I have explored the activity of top 10 contracts used (the top 10 shown in the first image). As it can see, the number of transactions involving these contracts seems to be remained similar over time, while the number of users using them increased from May 20th to around 26th May, when the number started to decreased reaching similar previous numbers before the jump. In the final chart, we can see that there is a small correlation betweem the number of users using the contracts and the number of transactions involving it. However, there are some points out of the line.

Conclusions & Key insights

In this analysis we have explored the most popular contracts used on Flow Blockchain. The main inisghts extracted have been:

• The top 10 contracts are FlowToken and FlowFees, DapperUtilityCoin, Tokenforwarding related to FLOW, LNVCT, TopShot, and NFTStorefront related to NFTs,and FLOAT and TenantService related to other aspects.
• FlowToken and FlowFees have been gaining popularity over time.
• NFT contracts like LNVCT or TopShot/TopShotMarketV3 decreased their popularism.
• Regarding top 10 contracts, the number of transactions seems to be remained similar over time, while the number of users using them increased from May 20th to around 26th May.