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The state of Web3 report assesses the growth, impact, and reach of the worlds best cryptocurrency exchanges. Weve pulled the stats from 58 of the most popular cryptocurrency exchanges to get visibility into the top performers and understand how the general trends are changing in usage and reach. The statistics are pulled from March 2020 through to April 2022 to identify yearly and monthly changes of these major platforms.

Founder of Growth Models

Web3, crypto, NFTs, and DAOs are divisive issues.

Half the world seems to believe this is the future. The other half believe its little more than a scam.

I, obviously, fell into the former camp.

But well never be able to convince the detractors that Web3 is a legitimate development of the web and business unless we make it safer.

Especially because the vast majority of media coverage focuses on the negative news of scams, collapses, and hacks.

Our mission here at DeRev is to help people act with more confidence and with more safety in Web3.

To that end, weve put this report assessing the growth, impact, and reach of the worlds best cryptocurrency exchanges.

Why? First, to identify who are the top performers in the space so you know who youre better off

And second, to understand how cryptocurrency exchanges are changing on a monthly and yearly basis in terms of growth, adoption, and usage. Were zooming out to get a macro image of the industry to help you make more informed decisions and understand if the industry is growing or shrinking as a whole.

This is the state of Web3 report,cryptocurrency exchange edition.

Weve pulled the stats from 58 of the most popular cryptocurrency exchanges to get visibility into the top performers and understand how the general trends are changing in usage and reach.

The statistics were pulled from March 2020 through to April 2022 to identify yearly and monthly changes to these major platforms.

If you dont have the time to read the full report, heres a quick overview of the key learnings.

The 12-month period ending April 2022 when compared to the prior 12-month period saw

Now lets get into the full breakdown of cryptocurrency exchanges.

Unsurprisingly, the total reach of platforms has increased drastically between 2020-2021 and 2021-2022.

In fact, overallcryptocurrency exchangessaw an average 363.47% increase in overall traffic.

A 363.47% increase in overall traffic. We see a similar number when looking at how many of the visitors were unique. The increase of unique visitors increased by 479.70% on average.

The increase of unique visitors increased by 479.70%

However, whats interesting to note is that the unique visitors outpaced the growth of the total visitors in this time period.

Not by much, but it could be the start of a trend.

Unique visitors increased more than total visitors. This shows that there are more people visiting these sites yet not coming back for more than a single visit.

This is most likely thanks to the massive increase in publicity and interest Crypto received during 2021.

The higher occurrence of single visits is likely thanks to the steep learning curve with cryptocurrency exchanges and huge amounts of negative press that deter people from taking action.

If were to look at the average overall percentage of unique visitors, its pretty interesting. If youre growing any similar platform, this is the average rate of returning visitors I would aim to ensure youre hitting the industry benchmark.

In the 2020-2021 period, the average unique visitor rate was 24.85%. In the 2021-2022 period it was slightly higher at 32.8%. Thats an increase of 131.98%.

% of unique visitors increased by 131.98% Lets finally look at overall engagement on the site.

To assess engagement were going to look at the overall time on site and the number of pages a user visits when using the exchange.

By the nature of an exchange, these will be high. People dont jump into one page and achieve all they want to.

Theyll have to find their wallet, check exchange rates, ensure theyve input the right chain to transfer through, and more.

So the visits per session should be quite high.

The average pages per session is consistent with what weve seen so far. Theyre slightly higher in the 2020-2021 period.

Likely because this period had more serious and experienced crypto people who were more interested in using these platforms.

The latter period will have had a lot of people heading to these platforms to check things out thanks to the increased press coverage.

However, many of these wont have much experience or knowledge on what to do or how to use the platforms effectively.

Pages per visit dropped 32.14%. The average time on site for these visitors seems to follow the same trend. Once again, ToS is reduced when you get into the 2021-2022s time period.

We see 2022s time period achieving only 78% of the ToS as the previous time period.

Visit duration dropped 22%. The overall visit duration to cryptocurrency exchange is still very high despite the drop.

One theory we have is that with newer traders coming in, they may not spend as long comparing various assets and prices. In addition, they may not be using agood hardware walletto store their assets.

Anyone who has used a cold wallet will tell you that it slows down any transaction.

Basically, there are more new people who aren't as knowledgeable or as security conscious as longer-term crypto investors.

All in all, we see an obvious trend in cryptocurrency exchanges reach and engagement.

Theres been a huge influx of new users in the crypto world, likely thanks to the huge press the industry has received throughout 2021.

However, the engagement rate of these new users isn't as high as it once was.

This is likely because a good portion of this new traffic is less educated on crypto and is either trying to get into digital currencies or is simply checking out whats available.

Do we think this trend will continue? Yes.

Do we think this is cause for concern? No.

On average, engagement has dropped by ~27%. However, traffic overall has increased by an astounding 363% on average.

Theres still a huge number of highly engaged people coming to cryptocurrency exchanges, and the trends all seem set to continue growing.

Lets quickly look at the top performers in the reviewed crypto exchanges.

Reach is only half the equation when ranking cryptocurrency exchanges.

We also need to look at the trading volume of these exchanges to identify the best performing platforms and understand what changes to reach and engagement do to trading volume.

There has, obviously, been a huge increase in trading volume over the same time period.

Whats really interesting is how the increase is very similar to the increase we see in the increased unique visitor rate.

Across all exchanges surveyed, theres been an average 424.65% increase in trading volume. Very similar to the 479.70% increase in unique visitors.

The traffic data seems to show an increase in overall traffic, but a decrease in return visitors and overall engagement.

Basically indicates more newbie traders who arent as serious about crypto as long-time traders.

As such, I would have expected the trading volume to have experienced less growth than traffic and unique visitors.

However, the increase in unique visitors and trading volume really is quite close.

Trading volume and unique visitors share a close correlation in growth. If we then compare the trading volume against unique users, the average trading value per unique visit is huge.

I say huge because I come from a software marketing background where the average order value is much, much lower.

If I were to pull the stats of recorded Binance users vs. trading volume, its in the 10s or thousands per user.

This metric, because unique visitors wont necessarily sign up for the service, is more conservative.

But on average, the average trading volume per unique visitor to cryptocurrency exchanges fell between the two time periods.

It was $9125.08 in the 2020-2021 time period.

That fell to $8077.92 in the following year. A total loss of around 11.48%.

The average trading volume per unique visitor fell 11.48%. However, once again as the number of unique visitors increased so dramatically, the overall impact is a positive gain for the exchanges.

When comparing trading volume with other metrics like pages per visit and time-on-site, theres no obvious correlation - at least none as strong as the unique visitors to trading volume.

I am surprised by this as I thought the exchanges with higher return traffic would be the ones to see higher trading volume.

Now lets get into specific exchanges and how they perform.

We now have an overview of how the overall cryptocurrency exchange reach has grown. Lets dig in to find the top performers.

There are a few surprises here. If youre already thinning one or two players are miles ahead of the pack, youre right.

The three biggest exchanges in the 2021-2022 period by visitor count areBinance,Coinbase, andeToro.

And when we say theyre ahead, theyre far ahead of the pack.

Binance is by far the leader here.

What I find most interesting here is that the big winners all seem to have very similar stats on one or two key metrics linked to engagement.

Repeat visitors are a key element in assessing the overall user experience and value service offers to a user.

If a site has a very high unique visitor rate, it often means that people check out the site one time and never return.

This indicates the site isnt solving the needs as people never come back.

When assessing cryptocurrency exchanges, I noticed that theres a key difference between the major players and smaller brands.

In particular, we see the same percentage of unique customers regardless of traffic month over month.

For example, if Binance has 100,000,000 users this month with a ~30% unique visitor rate, it means that 70% of their traffic is visitors coming back more than once.

Next month, they might generate 200,000,000 users. However, they still maintain a similar ~30% unique visitor rate. This means that 70% of the extra 100,000,000 are users who come back more than once.

This is similar to all of the big exchanges.

Youll see that traffic fluctuates wildly, but the % of unique visitors stays pretty consistent.

Even with wild traffic swings, the unique visitor % stays relatively constant. Basically, these sites have systems in place to ensure that when someone comes to their site, theres something there to get them to come back multiple times within the same time month.

This tells us that theyre very good at solving their users problems and ensuring they get the service theyre looking for.

Often youll see traffic spike with a lot of new users who never return. Not in these big brands.

Binance maintains a relatively steady 30% state of unique visitors and is the largest by overall traffic.

WhereasCrypto.comhas around 55% uniques. Meaning only 45% of their traffic is return visitors.

In short, this shows me that Binance is likely offering a better service than Crypto.com to their users as the majority of their traffic is from returning visitors.

Pages per visit are also a good indicator of user experience, especially for cryptocurrency exchanges.

Youre very unlikely to find the currency you want to invest in and action the trade by visiting a single page.

Youre going to have to view multiple pages to find the right currency, fund your wallet, and make the exchange.

The average page per visit for cryptocurrency exchanges across all those analyzed for the year is 3.22 per visit.

Which is what youd expect for the majority of people looking to buy a single currency like Bitcoin.

Getting that transaction done on 3 pages is normal.

Exchanges with higher than average pages per visit often have better navigation, leading to people clicking through to more pages.

Go here to see the original:
The State of Web3 - Cryptocurrency Exchange Growth and Trading Volume in 2022 - hackernoon.com