Decentraland has more users than reported. The analytics and metrics based on smart contract interaction are just capturing a fraction of the actual numbers. Web2 (off-chain) and Web3 analytics are complex, and need new methods for metrics, statistics, and assumptions.
The online controversy: Low Metaverse participation or wrong data?
Coindesk posted an article in early October 2022 stating “It’s Lonely in the Metaverse: Decentraland’s 38 Daily Active Users in a $1.3B Ecosystem1. The claim was that Decentraland only had 38 daily active users (DAUs) which started an international debate on how to count users in the Metaverse 2. A lot of other media sites have chimed in and re-posted this information wrongly3,4. The news website Protos stated on October 19 that “Metaverse tokens [are] down two thirds as users get bored and leave” 5, and a certain anti-Metaverse sentiment started to rise across the blogosphere6. The Decentraland Foundation posted a correction and further information on their data on Oct. 11, 2022 titled “How Many DAU Does Decentraland Have?“7, which tried to clear up the FUD with new numbers. They further explained that “Decentraland is not a company and that it doesn’t view users as a product”, but got criticized by Kotaku’s Sisi Jiang because “there’s some funky math going on”8. While the answer of Decentraland Foundation was far from perfect, the numbers presented are still calculated very conservatively, and the definition of an “active user” is very specific. We are outlining in our argument that a number of 60,000 – 80,000 daily active users would be the optimistic assumption to consider—and this data is backed by the recent 2022 Metaverse Report #2 9 by DappRadar.
Our data, as well as data from other sources mentioned in this text, show that Metaverse interest is growing. Measuring the Web3 (on-chain metrics) is only a part of the puzzle – as Web2 metrics are better for some user types. Participation with the Metaverse Decentraland can be through a diverse number of channels.
What Coindesk did wrong
Coindesk did not do any research on the methods of calculating user participation in the Metaverse before posting negative sentiment clickbait. This practice is very problematic, as the cryptocurrency press is already riddled with fake news, questionable sources and wonky data.
The initial data Coindesk reported had been taken from DappRadar, which is a site tracking Smart Contracts and other Web3 analytics. DappRadar has since then updated its scripts to track 3,553 Decentraland smart contracts across Ethereum and Polygon10, and Coindesk reported that DappRadar works together with Decentraland to track more Smart Contracts11. In an updated post from October 18, 2022, DappRadar stated that they counted 650 Daily Active Users with on-chain interaction alone, which Coindesk again interpreted as the daily active users10. But this number only reflects the settlement layer of the Blockchain, and is only reflecting the winning bids on the marketplace, and transactions of ownership. The data excludes marketplace participation, and actual users online in the virtual world.
In their 2022 Metaverse Report #2 9, DappRadar updated the numbers already to a more recent amount. It reported that “Decentraland welcomed 56,000 daily users in September [2022]”.
The September events attracted 56,000 daily active users (DAU) to Decentraland’s virtual parcels, an increase of 6% from August. The blockchain activity measured by UAW also paints a bullish outlook for the virtual world, as almost 800 unique wallets interact daily with Decentraland’s contracts, including meta-transactions.9
A different approach to Metaverse metrics
Looking only at Smart Contracts metrics gives the wrong impression about Metaverse participation. We are presenting arguments that the number is significantly higher, depending on how you count, what you include, and how to incorporate Web2 (off-chain) and Web3 (on-chain) data.
Metaverse interaction is not only happening on-chain
- By just observing Smart Contracts, one can only capture things that happen on the Blockchain (on-chain). Everything that happens off-chain is excluded. On-chain metrics only shows data from the settlement layer of the Blockchain, and is thus only reflecting the winning bids on the marketplace, and transactions of ownership (and others). The data excludes marketplace participation, and actual users online in the virtual world. Traditionally, the daily active users are a Web2 metric, and do not involve transactions, but access to a digital resource (views, clicks). This shows that the data collection as well as the metrics need new methods and sources to be considered.
- Most of the corrected numbers of Decentraland Foundation and Sandbox 2 are excluding “drive-by visitors” such as guest users. If you only count the active users who connect via their Wallet, this will exclude all the “Guest Mode” users. Metacat.world12 counted scene visits, which paints an entirely different picture of ca. 40K daily users. The updated report from DappRadar explains that 56.000 daily users have been visiting Decentraland9 counted with new metrics.
Definitions of “active users” are very narrow
- Decentraland Foundation defines “an ‘Active User’ as someone who enters Decentraland and moves out of the initial parcel they entered the world into”7. With this approach, users are not counted who are not leaving individual scenes. These can be as high as 60% of all the users on Decentraland as reported by Coindesk13, on the example of ICE Poker players, which mostly don’t leave the massive premises of the game.
Other economic and “off-metaverse” interaction
- Smart Contract metrics should be added on top of all the other metrics, as people would also interact with the Decentraland economy by participating in the Decentraland Marketplace (with buying and selling of items). These numbers, as well as the participation in land and scene rentals/buys/, sells, are not considered in any of the discussed metrics at all.
- What are we actually counting? Are we counting players or users? Do we only count people who log in with their avatars, or are we including the whole Decentraland ecosystem? If we are including the wider ecosystem, then we have to include the Marketplace, the exchanges which list $MANA, governance voting, as well as the Discord channels for Decentraland (the Decentraland Discord had 174,488 members with 8,802 online users on October 21, 2022).
While it is definitely not an easy task to do, measuring the participation in Metaverses such as Decentraland and Sandbox is clearly possible. What is needed is a different approach, and to know where the limits of current statistics lie.
How to count users in the metaverse: guest players and wallet users
Firstly, there are two types of users in Decentraland: the ones that connect with their wallet, and the ones that connect in “Guest Mode”. Both of these users should be included in a statistic about daily active users.
Secondly, there is already detailed information by the Decentraland Foundation, which defines active users like this:
The Decentraland Foundation definition of an Active User is people who login and then move out of a parcel. https://dcl-metrics.com There might be discrepancies between DCL Metrics and Foundation data. (source: twitter, @decentraland)
According to this definition, the September data of Decentraland looks like this (source: Twitter, @decentraland). In this case, only registered users are counted!
Let’s have a look at some of September’s data:
56,697 MAU
1,074 Users interacting with smart contracts
1,732 minted Emotes
6,315 sold Wearables
300 Creators received royalties
161 created Community Events
148 DAO Proposals
The definition of the Decentraland Foundation is very narrow, and mostly includes other data, which are neither players, nor users.
Other sources and metrics
DCL-Metrics
dcl-metrics counts 8542 daily active users in October in averay. This is just one way of calculating active users (and undoubtedly not the only way).
Atlas CORP added to these statistics that this is also not everything, “as it is possible to play Decentraland on private servers not listed by the DAO smart contracts”14.
Metacat.world
Metacat.world presents another way of quantifying the metrics of the Decentraland Metaverse. They are using parcel data and do not include tokens or other assets. With their calculation, daily active users in Decentraland are up to 40,000.
2022 Metaverse #2 Report by DappRadar
After their data has been interpreted wrongly, DappRadar published an updated report for Metaverse statistics on October 20, 22.
2021 data from Decentraland foundation
Past data from 2021 as reported by one of the founders of Decentraland referred to 300,000 monthly active users and 18,000 daily active users in 2021. This could very well mean that Decentraland has doubled its user base since then! (see: Decentraland Stats: 300K Monthly Active Users, Under 20K Daily Users).
Real proof: experience report from live interaction of three months in Decentraland
During the time the FUD article by Coindesk was published, RIAT Labs has been organizing a raffle and two games in Decentraland, both of which need user registration. Across these games and raffles, we got over 100 subscriptions per day. Furthermore, we had 3 people live on three of the Decentraland servers speaking to players (each with over 20 contacts per day). So only our collected numbers are already higher than those reported by Coindesk.
Conclusion: between 50k – 70k daily users
A proper and clear number would need much more time and research effort, as different on-chain and off-chain sources have to be included, and there still is not “the one” methodology to effectively track and display Web3 participation. This means we have to work with a range for now, and work on a further precision of the metric.
| Metric | Number | Sampling frequency | Source |
| Daily Active Players | 56,000 | Day | DappRadar9 |
| Discord | 8,693 | Day | Source: taken from Decentraland Discord online user count by Discord |
| On-Chain activity | 1,828.93 | Day | Lump-sum of chain interaction based on the data from Decentraland Foundation7 from Sep. 2022 and divided by 31 to get to days. Speculative number, which is set conservatively, and should include: On-chain governance, marketplace interaction (including bids placed), rentals, and asset transfers. |
A more optimistic number for Decentraland user participation is in the range of 50,000 to 70,000 user interactions per day (counting Guest Mode users, Smart Contract interactions, Marketplace users interacting externally, and actual scene visits without people leaving the parcel). This is still a conservative metric after all, as it excludes people trading the token on exchanges, as well as other social media channels of Decentraland.
With this article, we hope to have debunked some FUD and wrong assumptions about user participation in Decentraland. Please write us if you want to discuss further, have other data or want to get in contact with RIAT Labs.
- Thompson, C. (2022). It’s Lonely in the Metaverse: DappRadar Data Suggests Decentraland Has 38 ‘Daily Active’ Users in $1.3B Ecosystem. [online] @coindesk. Available at: https://www.coindesk.com/web3/2022/10/07/its-lonely-in-the-metaverse-decentralands-38-daily-active-users-in-a-13b-ecosystem/ [Accessed 27 Oct. 2022].[↩][↩]
- Brayden Lindrea (2022). Metaverse platforms refute ‘misinformation’ about daily active users. [online] Cointelegraph. Available at: https://cointelegraph.com/news/metaverse-platforms-refute-misinformation-about-daily-active-users [Accessed 27 Oct. 2022].[↩][↩]
- Tangermann, V. (2022). $1.2 Billion Metaverse Horrified by Report It Only Had 38 Active Users. [online] Futurism. Available at: https://futurism.com/the-byte/metaverse-decentraland-report-active-users [Accessed 27 Oct. 2022].[↩]
- Lawler, R. (2022). Decentraland has a $1 billion valuation but only 8,000 daily users. [online] The Verge. Available at: https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/13/23402418/decentraland-metaverse-empty-38-users-dappradar-wallet-data [Accessed 27 Oct. 2022].[↩]
- Wise, A. (2022). Metaverse tokens down two thirds as users get bored and leave. [online] Protos. Available at: https://protos.com/metaverse-tokens-down-two-thirds-as-users-get-bored-and-leave/ [Accessed 27 Oct. 2022].[↩]
- Oluwapelumi Adejumo (2022). Top 10 metaverse tokens tank as interest wanes. [online] CryptoSlate. Available at: https://cryptoslate.com/top-10-metaverse-tokens-tank-as-interest-wanes/ [Accessed 27 Oct. 2022].[↩]
- Decentraland (2022). How Many DAU Does Decentraland Have? [online] Decentraland. Available at: https://decentraland.org/blog/announcements/how-many-dau-does-decentraland-have/ [Accessed 27 Oct. 2022].[↩][↩][↩]
- Jiang, S. (2022). $1.2 Billion Metaverse Company Boasts It Has A Whopping 8,000 Daily Users. [online] Kotaku. Available at: https://kotaku.com/metaverse-billion-daily-users-meta-nft-crypto-1849653112 [Accessed 27 Oct. 2022].[↩]
- DappRadar (2022). Metaverse Report #2: Demand for Metaverse Remains Amidst Crypto Turmoil. [online] Dappradar.com. Available at: https://dappradar.com/blog/metaverse-report-2-demand-for-metaverse-remains-amidst-crypto-turmoil [Accessed 27 Oct. 2022].[↩][↩][↩][↩][↩]
- Reynolds, S. (2022). DappRadar Says Decentraland has 650 Daily Active Users. [online] @coindesk. Available at: https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2022/10/18/dappradar-says-decentraland-has-650-daily-active-users/ [Accessed 27 Oct. 2022].[↩][↩]
- Thompson, C. (2022). DappRadar Says It’s Recalculating Decentraland User Data. [online] @coindesk. Available at: https://www.coindesk.com/web3/2022/10/11/dappradar-says-its-recalculating-decentraland-user-data/ [Accessed 27 Oct. 2022].[↩]
- Metacat.world. (2022). Analytics – MetaCat. [online] Available at: https://www.metacat.world/analytics?type=decentraland [Accessed 27 Oct. 2022].[↩]
- Wilser, J. (2022). The Metaverse Casino That Wasn’t. [online] Coindesk.com. Available at: https://www.coindesk.com/layer2/sinweek/2022/08/29/the-metaverse-casino-that-wasnt/ [Accessed 27 Oct. 2022].[↩]
- howie310 (2022). Metaverse Data – Don’t trust, verify! [online] Atlas Corporation. Available at: https://www.atlascorp.io/post/metaverse-data-don-t-trust-verify [Accessed 27 Oct. 2022].[↩]