A closer look at the user interactions of Ethereum DeFi dapps

As part of our report covering daily activity trends in the Ethereum DeFi sector. DappRadar also researched the interactions between the most popular Ethereum DeFi dapps.

Taking the most popular Ethereum DeFi dapp – MakerDAO – as the base. We calculated what percentage of the wallets interacting with MakerDAO on a monthly basis also interacted with the other DeFi dapps covered in the report.

Let Jon Jordan take you through the analysis

2020 so far

First looking at January 2020. Compound was the clear leader in terms of having a common audience. 28% of the wallets interacting with MakerDAO also interacted with Compound.

This makes sense as historically there’s always been a tight relationship between the two Ethereum dapps. Although this has weakened since MakerDAO started offering interest payments (and borrowing and trading) within its Oasis dapp.

This weakening is further demonstrated during February and March. When the percentage of MakerDAO’s wallets also interacting with Compound decreased down to a low of 9%.

There’s also a large decline of interactions between wallets interacting with MakerDAO and Fulcrum during this period. No doubt this was partly driven by Fulcrum’s decision to restrict its trading features. Which resulted in its much smaller audience during March.

The interactions between MakerDAO and Synthetix, and MakerDAO and dYdX declined by less. But in both cases, there was an obvious drop.

Conclusions

Given all dapps experienced rising activity during this period, it’s clear – albeit for various reasons – MakerDAO captured a large slice of the active Ethereum DeFi audience. In a sense fragmenting the previous ‘DeFi stack’ that had been created during 2019.

In that context, it’s also worth noting that as a standalone DeFi dapp (perhaps even its own ecosystem). The overlap between MakerDAO and Synthetix’s user bases has always been minimal.

You can discover more details about how the audience for Ethereum DeFi dapps has been changing in recent months. In our report: Has the Coronavirus halted DeFi’s momentum?