I’m increasingly starting to think that DUSK’s biggest operational problem isn’t that “no one participates in the events,” but rather: after these people take part, where do they go?
In the past, when doing incentive testnets, the staker reward pool alone has taken in 2.5 million DUSK, and node participants also had follow-up expectations like airdrops, POAPs, and snapshots. This approach is pretty typical: first use rewards to pull people in—get users to stake, run nodes, and get familiar with the network. The results also can’t be called bad. On-chain staking is already over 210 million DUSK, and the active nodes shown by a third-party Dashboard are close to 200.
But I’m more concerned about another set of data.
The official website for @Dusk currently claims 50K+ investor reach. However, previously, a community browser’s statistics showed only 921 on-chain addresses. In the past 24 hours, there were 68 active addresses, 174 transactions, and contract calls were only 8.
Of course, “reaching 50,000 investors” and “50,000 on-chain users” were never the same thing. I won’t force-fit the two metrics against each other. But precisely because they’re not the same, operations should answer this: after being reached, how many people actually create wallets? After creating wallets, how many people transfer, stake, and use applications? Thirty days and sixty days after the rewards end, how many are still left?
Especially this year, Dusk Connect and the new wallet have already been added to improve user on-ramps. That’s a good thing. But making the entry point smooth is only the first step—the real difficulty is getting users to come back a second time.
So my current assessment of DUSK is simple: past incentives prove it can “bring people in,” and staking and node data also show it has retained a group of core participants. But whether it can turn event users into long-term users—based on currently available public data—I still don’t find it convincing.
What project operations fears most isn’t that no one comes to events. It’s when many people show up every time—then when the event stops, they stop too.
#dusk $DUSK @Dusk
In the past, when doing incentive testnets, the staker reward pool alone has taken in 2.5 million DUSK, and node participants also had follow-up expectations like airdrops, POAPs, and snapshots. This approach is pretty typical: first use rewards to pull people in—get users to stake, run nodes, and get familiar with the network. The results also can’t be called bad. On-chain staking is already over 210 million DUSK, and the active nodes shown by a third-party Dashboard are close to 200.
But I’m more concerned about another set of data.
The official website for @Dusk currently claims 50K+ investor reach. However, previously, a community browser’s statistics showed only 921 on-chain addresses. In the past 24 hours, there were 68 active addresses, 174 transactions, and contract calls were only 8.
Of course, “reaching 50,000 investors” and “50,000 on-chain users” were never the same thing. I won’t force-fit the two metrics against each other. But precisely because they’re not the same, operations should answer this: after being reached, how many people actually create wallets? After creating wallets, how many people transfer, stake, and use applications? Thirty days and sixty days after the rewards end, how many are still left?
Especially this year, Dusk Connect and the new wallet have already been added to improve user on-ramps. That’s a good thing. But making the entry point smooth is only the first step—the real difficulty is getting users to come back a second time.
So my current assessment of DUSK is simple: past incentives prove it can “bring people in,” and staking and node data also show it has retained a group of core participants. But whether it can turn event users into long-term users—based on currently available public data—I still don’t find it convincing.
What project operations fears most isn’t that no one comes to events. It’s when many people show up every time—then when the event stops, they stop too.
#dusk $DUSK @Dusk