Active users vs addresses; questions over the apt metric to depict Phantom’s growth

All over the world, it’s time for the end-of-year growth reports or appraisals – and the crypto sector is no different. But when one wallet set out to record its own stats, there were several questions about the way it measured its data.

Phantom of the Wallet

The Solana wallet Phantom noted its public launch in July 2021 and tweeted,

“In just 9 months we have grown to over 1.8M monthly active users with no sign of slowing down!”

However, journalist and Unchained podcast host Laura Shin questioned whether this number specifically referenced active “users” or “addresses.”

For its part, Phantom responded to clarify that it was indeed talking about unique users. It said,

“These are unique users. We don’t track or log individual addresses. You could use 10 different accounts through the extension and you’d be counted as 1 user.”

Several other users become curious after hearing this, and naturally so. Counting active users rather than active addresses comes with huge implications for Phantom’s stats – and the way other protocols measure their own growth. Shin also agreed that the two metrics are very different.

1/4 — 2021 has been an incredible year for Phantom & the @solana ecosystem! We opened up our invite-only beta in March and then launched publicly in July.

In just 9 months we have grown to over 1.8M monthly active users with no sign of slowing down! pic.twitter.com/kY4tjBQuyv

— Phantom (@phantom) January 1, 2022

Answering another user who used separate browsers for their addresses, Phantom replied,

“This depends. If you use the same account for Chrome Store across all 3 browsers, then you *should* count as a single user. If you use different Google accounts or installed anonymously, then you would show up as multiple.”

For its part, Phantom also shared some other stats. The wallet’s Twitter account reported that users had staked more than $16 billion in SOL, swapped more than $1.3 billion in tokens, and carried out more than nine million token transfers.

Finally, Phantom announced its most popular dApps: Raydium, Magic Eden, Solanart, and Orca.

Sing for me, Solana

At press time, SOL was exploring new wallets at $174.42. The alt fell by 1.03% in the past 24 hours, and plunged 13.355% in the last week alone.

It’s also worth noting that Solana ended 2021 with a moral – and an environmental – win as the Solana Foundation announced it had achieved carbon neutrality for 2021. This was accomplished by reportedly funding the destruction of refrigerants, to offset Solana’s carbon footprint.

How this pans out in 2022 is a development both current and future investors will be tracking.