Puca By The Numbers — February, March WRITTEN BY Jonathan Medina

Hello PucaFam!

I want to apologize for being a little bit late with this article—I’ve had to hold the release because we wanted to tie this article with some announcements, one of which we do get to announce toward the end of the article. It’s probably a good thing that we didn’t muddy this article with other announcements and data since there’s a bit to talk about on the numbers front. Let’s get started!

Total Points in the System

129,880,819 (-3,399,650)

Total Registered Members

177,138 (+796)

Active Points

86,579,113 (-60,711)

Active Members

15,808 (+1,431)

The numbers in parenthesis are the deltas from our last article at the end of January. There was some confusion about the “Active Members” terminology last time, so I’ll define it again to help keep that clear. Active Members simply references the number of members who own “Active” points. If your account is not “Dormant,” it is considered “Active.” And since we’re on the topic of the last article, I’d like to revisit something that I said:

I Was Wrong

Last time, I made the following extrapolation:

“Last year we destroyed a total of 30,517,447 points. As long as we keep in step with that this year, then we can see the active points shrink to 56,000,955.”

As you can see from the current numbers this doesn’t compute. For starters, we are not on track to destroy 30 million points this year, were on track for 12 million— since we’ve only destroyed around three million in the first quarter. Here’s where I went wrong:

1) The number of points destroyed does not necessarily come off the top of the Active Points total. Even though we are destroying points from the Active Pool, this contraction can invite Dormant Members to become active. “Hey, I’m hearing that there’s more activity on PucaTrade. I’m going to hop back on work on getting cards for my decks!” As Dormant members become Active, the Active Point total raises. This is a natural progression as the economy improves.

2) I calculated the number of points destroyed to make the previous assertion but did not subtract the number of new points created. This shouldn’t impact the number too much, but it is a non-zero amount and should be included for precision's sake.

3) Our trade numbers are much lower in the first half of this year than they were last year. We’re actually digging out of a really low pit. If you compare January 2017—30 million points traded—to January 2018—with only 10 million points traded—you can see we would have destroyed close to three times the points in 2017 than we did in 2018. The fact that our trade statistics are moving upwards is a good thing; this could mean that we'll invert the trend from last year.

Dormant Members and The Point Pool

So what does all this mean? It means that we cannot fully extrapolate the speed of our economic health, because we cannot know how many points will be reintroduced to the active point pool each month. I will be looking at building some reports to see if the data shows a trend of Dormant members becoming Active.

That data may help provide a clearer picture, but it's not a sure thing, because I expect that there will be a tipping point. Knowing human nature, I would expect there to be a point where the economy has improved to the such a degree that a large number of members become Active again, making the point pool grow significantly and maybe introducing some problems. In my estimation, we are pretty far off from that, but I'm looking ahead to make sure we have the data to manage such an occurrence.

Let's jump out of theory and into some data, that's where we can see what is actually happening:

January–March Trends

Above is the graph for the trade activity (based on total point values) for January through March. You’ll see that in January we had a surge in trade activity, which was an improvement on December’s numbers. I attribute this to the announcement of leadership change that was made in January, as well as people coming off vacation and returning to regular routines. The next change in trajectory is in February, where things take a dip. There are many possible reasons for this: There were no sets released in February, and this came shortly after our numbers article at the end of January, which showed positive results—it’s possible that the positive report shifted supporters from “crisis mode” to a more relaxed position. Things get interesting in March because we see a climb back to where things were in January.

The interesting part is that the spike is mostly by points (not trades). If you look at the graph above, you’ll see that March is in the sub-December region for number of trades, but it’s far above December in number of points. This means fewer trades and higher number of points, so better quality trades in essence. I attribute this change to that “Marketplace” channel in Discord, which was rolled out on February 28th.

For those who are not familiar with the Marketplace channel in Discord, it’s a place where members can list what they have for trade and how many points they want for it. This channel can serve as a soft-test, and a way to collect data if we ever want to add the feature to the live site (kind of like the now-defunct auction channel). We’ve seen some nice cards go through the Marketplace: Cavern of Souls, fetch lands, and multiple masterpieces including two MPS Sol Ring. The marketplace is encouraging bigger trades and more trade volume as members collect points to make big marketplace buys. I expect to see a boost in numbers in April since the marketplace is now in full-swing alongside the release of Dominaria.

What’s Next?

In my last article, I said this:

"In the end, I think features are necessary. New features would not only speed up point destruction, but they would also be a great response to you, the PucaTrade community, for the goodwill you've shown.”

This is still true today, the only difference is that we have secured some development resources and new development will begin very soon! The plan is to focus on our promotion feature and fee structure first. You can expect some more information as well as opportunities for feedback in the coming weeks.

Wrapping it Up!

Even though this article’s numbers do not match January's, I don’t feel like the numbers are “bad” or that the article is “negative.” The reviewing, analyzing, and sharing of these numbers is always a good thing no matter what they reflect; it gives us a good sense of what is happening, and if what we’re doing is working. Now that we have these articles as a baseline, imagine how much clearer it will be to see how our development efforts make an impact!

Speaking of which, I’m really excited about working on the development of the site in my new capacity. I expect the project to bring challenges, but also a lot of benefit to PucaTrade and our community. I’d like to discuss this article and any other questions that you might have in our campfire chats. I will schedule two of them this time, one in the morning and one in the evening to cover a wider spectrum of time:



Morning Campfire: 11:30am EST April Monday the 23rd

Evening Campfire: 8:00pm EST April Monday the 23rd

Until then, have an awesome weekend.