Base leads explosive growth: Flipside

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Focusing on EVM chains, the Flipside’s Onchain Users Report tracked both record growth and emerging challenges in maintaining engagement quality. Here are a few trends to watch in 2025.

Record user growth

Newly acquired users reached a record 19.4 million in October, with Base contributing 13.7m — “almost 8x the runner-up, Polygon,” the report notes. This explosive growth was attributed to Coinbase’s vast user base and Base’s focus on “trending sectors like memecoin trading and onchain AI via new initiatives like Based Agents.”

An “acquired user” is defined as a user who has conducted at least two transactions in 2024.

Ethereum also saw consistent user growth, averaging 1.56m new users monthly. Arbitrum peaked in May with 3.3m acquired users, fueled by GameFi and SocialFi.

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Bitcoin usership, however, remained relatively flat despite BTC reaching its historic $100k milestone. This reflects speculative activity rather than meaningful onboarding.

Superusers: Base and Polygon dominate

Flipside terms “superuser” as those who executed 100 or more transactions on a chain, at any point.

Base led the way here with 15.1m wallets executing 100+ transactions, 38% more than Ethereum’s 10.7m superusers. Meanwhile, Polygon recorded 1.5m new superusers in 2024, underscoring its strength outside of DeFi. According to the report, “Polygon’s superuser activity also surpassed that of every other observed chain, with 867.7m monthly super-user transactions.”

Ethereum retained its position as the DeFi hub with 10.9m DeFi-related superusers, more than Arbitrum and Optimism combined.

Blast’s surge and sharp decline

Among newly launched chains, Blast made headlines with a record single-month peak of 134.9k acquired users in June. This was driven by its ability to incentivize “a wide range of gamified onchain activities.”

However, the chain experienced a significant user drop-off in Q4. Despite the evident exodus of points farmers from the chain, the report highlights Blast’s upside potential: “The remaining users are still active on multiple fronts, suggesting that the chain has the potential to outlive, and exceed, its initial hype.”

Uniswap’s DeFi dominance

Uniswap solidified its dominance, capturing 91.3% of DEX activity on Base and increasing its share on Ethereum by 27.72% compared to 2023. This points to a broader trend, “a ‘winner-takes-most’ DeFi market [that] disproportionately favors larger incumbent players with deeper liquidity and brand familiarity,” the authors said.

Meanwhile, LFJ (née Trader Joe) retained its lead on Avalanche, growing its market share by just over 6% from 2023, thanks to innovations like Auto-Pools.

The challenge

While 2024 saw record user acquisition, Flipside emphasizes the need for quality engagement. As the report notes: “Behind the headlines of record user growth lies a deeper challenge: building ecosystems that create meaningful, lasting engagement, not just fleeting speculation.”

For instance, despite Base attracting massive numbers of users, the report underscores the “narrow range of onchain actions its new user base is currently engaged in,” such as simply gambling on a memecoin or two. It’s not clear whether apps can execute on the opportunity to redirect users toward deeper activities like DeFi.

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