Around 70% of all new EVM users this year were on Polygon, with 12.3 million, compared to 13.4 million on Ethereum as of March 27. On the other hand, Arbitrum's user base has grown by 4.7 million since the start of 2024.

The historical dominance of Ethereum's mainnet is still there, but Layer-2 protocols are handling more data. The primary draw for new users is still decentralized finance, or defi, with Ethereum having the highest trade volume in Q1 at $12 billion.

Additionally, the rising trend of defi activity was in contrast to the erratic, dramatic swings of the previous year, suggesting that even blockchain beginners are becoming more interested in and involved in DeFi.

Second on the list, Arbitrum has gained $9.5 billion since the start of 2024. This milestone has been attributed by the Flipside report to increasing activity from new users in Arbitrum's defi area. By contrast, a rise in non-fungible token (NFT) activity is said to be the cause of Polygon's high new user numbers.

Because of Coinbase's efforts to make bitcoin easier for beginners, Base has almost quadrupled its new user base since January, with a record 243,000 new users as of March 16.

According to the research, "this still places Base far behind the leading EVM chains in terms of overall new user volume, but it still represents impressive growth, especially considering the chain's waning activity during the final months of 2023."

According to the research, this year's greatest single-day new user count across EVM chains is being experienced by the surge, which also happens to coincide with Bitcoin hitting a new all-time high.

Remarkably diverse, a large percentage of recently enrolled users engage with a variety of Ethereum decentralized apps (dApps). Among the six chains examined, Ethereum did not have the most uniformly dispersed app adoption, according to the report.

"Base deserves this distinction because, in contrast to Ethereum's roughly 300% difference in new user volume, the difference between the chain's 1 and 2 apps was only 16.9%."

"The first mover advantage and subsequent network effects of early protocols were probably lessened by Base's relative youth, preventing user consolidation around a single app."

On EVM chains, token swaps and bridge applications are the most common entry points for new users; on Ethereum, Uniswap is leading the way, while on Base, Orbiter Finance is leading the way.

The Flipside report's further findings indicate that the NFT trading activity across EVM chains presented a confusing image.

NFT trading by new users increased steadily on Ethereum and Base, while it dropped dramatically on Polygon from its early peaks. This variation illustrates how inconsistent interest in NFTs is, and it implies that they might not be the dominant story in the market narrative in the coming cycle as they were in the past.

Furthermore, the paper highlighted the function of certain applications in steering user behavior on different chains. For example, Worldcoin (WLD) attracted a lot of new Optimism users, suggesting a sustained community interest in certain projects:

"This astounding figure may indicate a possible divergence in Optimism's ecosystem evolution compared to other EVM chains, along with its low DeFi and NFT trading volume compared to other observed chains."