The Multichain Landscape: How Many Users Are Really Jumping Between Blockchains?

By CryptoLedger – April 2024

Since Ethereum introduced smart‑contract functionality in 2015, a vibrant ecosystem of Ethereum‑compatible (EVM) networks has emerged. Projects such as Binance Smart Chain (BNB Chain), Fantom, Avalanche, and Polygon have built their own Layer‑1s, while roll‑up solutions like Optimism, Arbitrum, and Polygon’s zk‑rollups have added scalability layers. By early 2023 the “multichain world” – a constellation of L1s, L2s, bridges, and cross‑chain dApps – was widely proclaimed as the new normal.

But how many crypto users actually navigate across these chains, and which pathways dominate? A recent analysis of externally owned addresses (EOAs) that interact with seven major EVM networks provides a data‑driven answer.

1. Daily Active Users: The Heavyweights

The study measured daily active users (DAU) on BNB Chain, Ethereum, Polygon, Fantom, Avalanche, Optimism, and Arbitrum over the past nine months.

BNB Chain’s lead is clear, while Optimism and Arbitrum have shown steady growth as the market settles on roll‑up solutions.

2. How Many Wallets Go Multichain?

The core of the analysis focused on the cross‑chain activity of EOAs – the “regular” wallets that users control directly, as opposed to contract accounts.

• Overall multichain participation: Only about 6 % of the examined EOAs have performed transactions on more than one of the seven chains.
• Single‑chain dominance: Roughly 94 % of wallets remain confined to a single network.

This suggests that, despite the proliferation of interoperable dApps and bridges, the majority of on‑chain identities continue to operate within a single ecosystem.

3. Overlap Between Chains: Which Pairs Share Users?

To gauge the degree of shared users, the analysts calculated the percentage of a chain’s active EOAs that also appeared on a second chain. The overlap matrix highlights a few notable patterns:

Optimism and Arbitrum, both roll‑up platforms, exhibit the strongest bilateral overlap, reflecting a user base that experiments across L2 scaling solutions. In contrast, BNB Chain, while having the greatest absolute cross‑chain traffic with Ethereum, Polygon, Fantom, and Avalanche, ranks third in relative overlap for the newer L2s.

4. Popular Journey Directions – Absolute vs. Relative

When the raw number of cross‑chain transactions is examined, the most frequent routes are:

• Ethereum → BNB Chain (≈ 8.5 million address pairings)
• BNB Chain → Ethereum (≈ 8.5 million)
• BNB Chain → Polygon (≈ 4.7 million)

However, converting these figures into “conversion rates” – the proportion of a source chain’s users who move to a particular destination – paints a more modest picture:

• Ethereum → BNB Chain: ≈ 2‑4 % of Ethereum’s active wallets
• BNB Chain → Ethereum: ≈ 2‑4 % of BNB Chain’s active wallets

The highest conversion rates occur between Optimism and Arbitrum, where roughly 30‑45 % of users on one L2 have also used the other, underscoring a tightly coupled L2 user community.

5. What Drives the Low Multichain Adoption?

Several hypotheses emerge from the data:

6. Strategic Implications for Ecosystem Builders

The overlap data is more than an academic exercise; it offers actionable insights for protocol teams, investors, and bridge operators:

• Targeted Expansion: A dApp anchored on Ethereum that sees low overlap with BNB Chain might find a relatively untapped user pool on BNB, justifying a multichain launch.
• Competitive Positioning: BNB Chain could prioritise features appealing to Optimism and Arbitrum users (e.g., fast‑finality bridges, L2‑compatible SDKs) to boost its share among the high‑overlap L2 community.
• Bridge Prioritisation: Since the Ethereum‑BNB and BNB‑Polygon corridors handle the largest absolute traffic, optimizing these bridges (lower fees, higher security) could capture the most value.
• Product Roadmaps: Protocols aiming to capture “cross‑chain power users” may focus on L2‑to‑L2 interactions, where conversion rates are already high, rather than trying to coax single‑chain users onto new networks.

7. Looking Ahead: From Data to Behaviour

The current state of multichain usage is still nascent. A 6 % cross‑chain participation rate may evolve as wallet UX improves and “smart accounts” that seamlessly manage assets across chains become mainstream. Future research from the same team plans to overlay dApp interaction data (e.g., DeFi lending, NFT marketplaces) onto the cross‑chain matrix and to examine bridging frequencies, offering a richer view of user intent versus mere address presence.

Key Takeaways

1. BNB Chain leads in raw daily active users, but its relative cross‑chain overlap is modest compared with newer L2s.
2. Optimism and Arbitrum display the strongest bilateral user overlap, indicating a tightly knit L2 community.
3. Only ~6 % of EOAs are active on more than one of the seven studied EVM chains, suggesting that multichain behaviour remains a niche habit rather than the norm.
4. High‑volume routes (ETH↔BNB, BNB↔Polygon) have low conversion percentages, meaning most users stay on their base chain.
5. Improved wallet experiences and cross‑chain tooling are likely the catalysts that will expand multichain adoption in the coming years.

David C., Senior Data Analyst at BNB Chain, contributed the analysis. Follow him on Twitter for further insights.

For more in‑depth data visualisations and methodology notes, visit the original research blog.

Source: https://dune.com/blog/the-multichain-world-fact-or-fiction