Onchain Crypto Users Grew By Record 62M in 2023: Report

A new report from Flipside Crypto, an onchain analytics platform, shows that 2023 was the most successful year to date for crypto in terms of attracting users, with 62.1M acquired users.

Ethereum led with 15.4M acquired users. Polygon followed with 15.2M, and Bitcoin came in third with 10.7M. Solana, which saw a resurgence in 2023, placed fifth among the eight blockchains in the study with 5.6M. The Layer 1 blockchain acquired over 45% of its new users in the months of May and December.

Flipside defines an acquired user as a blockchain address which initiated its second transaction in 2023.

Measuring a blockchain’s user count has traditionally been difficult. This is because a single user can control unlimited addresses, making it hard to lock down an exact figure. Many crypto participants have been known to spin up tens of wallets in order to maximize potential returns from airdrops.

Flipside found that 86.9% of Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) users stuck to one platform in 2023. The EVM is an execution environment for blockchains that started with Ethereum but was adopted on Layer 2s like Arbitrum and Optimism, as well as Layer 1s like Avalanche.

That contrasts with a trend in a report from the venture firm Electric Capital, which found that developers are increasingly pushing their code across multiple blockchains.

Looking forward, Flipside predicts that, like developers, users will learn to use multiple chains if a crypto bull run reemerges.