About the editor: Spencer Noon is Co-founder & General Partner at Variant Fund.

Network coverage:
Coverage on Polygon, Uniswap, Gaming, and Clearpool.

• Polygon has witnessed significant growth from a user perspective in 2022, with active addresses reaching 5.8m in Q3, an 11% increase from the previous quarter, representing a new ATH, with the majority of users pouring in from Benji Bananas (423k, New launch), 1Inch (159k, +67%), Uniswap V3 (101k, +16%), and Ultimate Champions (66k, +160%). Looking at weekly data, WAU have grown for four consecutive weeks, reaching a total of 1.56m (as of week 40).

• NFT sales volume has been rapidly increasing, reaching an ATH in September of 2022 ($2.36b). It should be noted that 12 of the top 15 collections by volume were financial NFTs (which to some extent can also be considered DeFi) - Uniswap V3 Positions NFT-v1 ($1.6b) and Aave ($1.3b) lead the rest.

• The number of deployed contracts on-chain has doubled in the last five months to reach a total of 940k as of October 1st. At the same time, the creator count has seen a massive spike since May to amass nearly 220k unique contract creators.

• Uniswap - the leading DEX in the Ethereum ecosystem - deployed on Polygon in late December of 2021. The project rapidly gained market share and controlled ~35% of volume within a week. Since then, Uniswap’s market share has only grown, and it now facilitates ~70% of DEX volume on Polygon. For reference, Uniswap’s market share on mainnet is actually less, tracking ~65%.

• Despite the market downturn, Uniswap’s user numbers on Polygon have held steady. DAU are tracking ~10-12k, which is about 1/3rd to 1/2th of mainnet’s DAU. The majority of daily users are returning traders; however, about ~17% of DAU are new.

• Uniswap’s volume has remained relatively steady on Polygon compared to mainnet. Daily volume on Polygon is tracking ~$50-70m, comparable levels to December of 2021. Mainnet volume is tracking considerably higher at ~$700m, but down from ~$3.25b in December of 2021.

• Gaming active users on Polygon have maintained a positive upward trend for the most part of the last four months. The massive user count jump in the week of 22nd August is attributed to the new launch: Benji Bananas, which has brought in 578k unique users and processed over 1.3m transactions so far.

• While the new games launched in the third quarter, such as Benji Bananas, contributed substantially towards gaming users, long-standing games - notably Arc8, Pegaxy, and Aavegotchi - have also significantly added to the overall user base. These Top 9 games make up about 8% of the network’s Q3 user base.

• Pegaxy and ZED Run have a combined NFT volume of 600m+ - the top two gaming-related collections. The dominance of gaming on Polygon OpenSea, one of the biggest NFT marketplaces, becomes even more evident given that 14 of the top 15 collections fall under the category.