The number of Active wallets trended upward, hitting a new all-time-high in Q4 of 11 mm+, an increase of 115% relative to last year's Q4, and the total active wallets reached 206 mm (+58% from 2021).

While the transaction volume of major chains dropped significantly in the second half of the year, the Polygon network maintained a healthy level of monthly transactions in the range of over 80 mm. On the other hand, Binance dropped to less than half its transaction volume from the beginning of the year to around 68 mm, Avalanche was steady until April, but trickled down to 2.8 mm by December.

Despite the slowdown in the market, Gaming and DeFi dApps on Polygon have not experienced sharp declines. The surge in gaming wallets in September can be attributed to the launch of Benji Bananas, a F2P game by Animoca Brands, that added a total of 1.4 Mn+ active wallets last year and processed 4 Mn+ transactions.

The spike in DeFi active wallets particularly in January and mid-year could be attributed to QuickSwap which amounted to 382k active wallets in January and over 125k in August, Hop Protocol (196k Active wallets in June), and 1inch (240k Active wallets in August).

Uniswap v3’s launch on Polygon in December of 2021 started with a steady rise driven by its capital efficiency. In 9 out of the 12 months in 2022, Uniswap recorded a month-over-month increase in trading volume, ending the year with an ATH monthly volume of $3.91 Bn. Among aggregators, 1inch continues to lead the chart with nearly half a million average monthly transactions and 90k active wallets.

Among the Top 10 games, 5 were added last year. Major new games (sorted by total active wallets in 2022): Benji Bananas (1.4 mm+), Life Beyond (349k+), Ultimate Champions (280k+), The Dustland (191k+), Poly Island (35k+), Playbite (27k+), and ​​Earntube (24k+).

Racing games (DeRace, Pegaxy, REVV, ZED Run) generated the most transactions (46 mm txns, +254% YoY; 480k wallets; +296% YoY), followed by Arcade games such as Arc8, Aavegotchi, etc. (38 mm transaction, +171% YoY), and GameFi - Sunflower Land, Aavegotchi, etc. (30 mm transactions, +545% YoY).

For both active wallets and transactions, the Sports category (Ultimate Champions, MetaSoccer) saw the biggest jump: 2.7 mm transactions (+19k%) and 291k wallets (+6k%).

The launch of Lens Protocol kickstarted the Web3 social revolution, giving birth to the #Lensverse - home of apps such as Lenster, Lenstube, Orb, and Lensta. The protocol hit the 100k profiles milestone in November and has processed 8 mm+ transactions since launch (with 2.3 mm of those in November alone). Unstoppable Domains also saw explosive growth after their deployment on Polygon, with 2.2 mm+ name creations across 650k domain owners.

With nearly 18 mm average transactions per month across their hundreds of price feeds, Chainlink comes out on top as the leading service provider - supporting other ecosystems dApps such as PlotX, Biconomy, Gains, and Aave.

Within DeFi dApps, Synthetics (Gains Network) recorded the largest YoY increase in transactions (2.7 mm, +23k%) with DEXs leading the Active wallet count and transactions with 2 mm+ wallets (+8% YoY) and 46 mm+ transactions. Yield platforms (0vix, Pods, Impermax, GoodGhosting, CREAM, etc.) recorded high transaction counts of 15 mm.

Amongst non-financial NFTs; Pegaxy ($391 mm), OPENSTORE ($76 mm), Crypto Unicorns ($65 mm), ZED Horse ($45 mm), and Skyweaver ($18 mm) lead in terms of volume.

Gaming’s dominance in the NFT landscape is clear - with asset ownership driving the next wave of gaming and entertainment. 16 of the top 20 collections by volume are under gaming (notable key players: Decentral Games, Aavegotchi, PlanetIX, and Sunflower Land).

The Reddit Collectible Avatars have 5.6 mm+ wallets holding the avatars since its launch in August. Covering 100k sales, $12 mm+ was recorded in sales volume, with individual avatars going for as high as $40k (30 Ξ). Since the first drops, subsequent artist partnerships and events have attracted more collection drops - Reddit Cup, Reddit Recap, Memetic Traders, etc. which continued the healthy activity in the ecosystem throughout the year.

Developer activity saw exceptional growth throughout 2022. Polygon crossed 1 mm all-time direct contracts deployed on-chain (with an average of 66k monthly contract creations throughout 2022). Furthermore, all-time direct contract creators stood at 265k, and we recorded 28k average monthly active creators, with roughly 19.5k new creators joining the ecosystem each month.

CONCLUSION

Last year was full of fruitful partnerships, mainstream adoption, and Web2 NFT advancement for the Polygon ecosystem. Some of the biggest brands took a dive into the world of digital collections, opening the door for millions of new users.

At the same time major projects from other chains joined the Polygon ecosystem in the past year: Uniswap v3 from Ethereum, OnePlanet from Terra with 63 collections on-board. This trend has continued in 2023, with the launch of Magic Eden and the migration of the y00ts collection.

There is a lot to look forward to in 2023. So be sure to check the Polygon blog and tune in to our social channels for everything in the Polygon ecosystem.

Read more: https://polygon.technology/blog/polygon-insights-for-2022