Render Network: Key Metrics Analysis for Q4 2022

Author: Render

Compiled by: ChainCatcher

The industry will regard the fourth quarter of 2022 as one of the most challenging periods. At the Render Network Foundation, we are committed to maintaining the core Render Network protocol and developing its community and transparency (through posts like this one). We have seen these struggles within the community, and our infrastructure has significantly improved, with many key usage metrics showing increased growth levels. Let’s take a deeper look at these numbers.

Overall, network usage grew by about 10% between the third and fourth quarters of 2022, showing a continued upward trend in utilization. This is reflected in the significant year-over-year growth for the entire years of 2021 and 2022— the total frames rendered in 2022 nearly doubled to 9,420,335, compared to 5,954,165 in 2021. The fourth quarter also saw an acceleration of trends that began in the second half of 2022, with significant improvements in the network's backend infrastructure, enabling greater scalability in 2023. Highlights include a 50% reduction in failure rates, a 50-75% improvement in the performance of network node topology, and comprehensive growth in user growth metrics related to the third quarter— notably accelerating in the last month of the fourth quarter.

Improvements are not limited to technological advancements. In the last quarter of 2022, the network laid the groundwork for establishing the Render Network Foundation and approved the Render Network Proposal (RNP) process, which continued in January with the first of many planned tokenomics upgrades under RNP - 001: Burn Mint Balance (BME). Meanwhile, creators have used the network to produce notable works—from the concert visuals for Lil Nas X's Montero tour to some of the most innovative crypto artworks of the fall— including a large batch of Render Network creators set to debut at the grand opening of Beeple Studios in March.

In terms of influence and thought leadership, the network's social media presence saw its largest growth ever in the last quarter of 2022. At the same time, a focus on educational and onboarding materials led to some of the network's best-performing social media posts ever, increasing user acquisition and retention funnels to boost usage in 2023. Overall, the network showed stable month-over-month and year-over-year growth across key metrics. This article will provide detailed data on these important network metrics for the last quarter of 2022.

Against a challenging macroeconomic backdrop, the usage of crypto services declined—leading to decreases in transaction volume, DeFi, and NFT activity compared to 2021—Render continued to grow. Contrary to these trends, the Render Network managed to maintain sustained growth in the last calendar year (2022) compared to 2021, demonstrating the resilience of the network's utility and user value proposition. Between the third and fourth quarters of 2022, the network's usage increased by about 10%. During a period when growth and usage often decline seasonally due to the holiday season, this metric not only maintained its momentum but accelerated.

Throughout the fourth quarter of 2022, the total frames rendered on the network grew by 9.8%, outperforming all three periods of the quarter compared to the third quarter of 2022. This aligns with the consistency/resilience of the network users mentioned above, who continue to integrate the network deeply into their creative workflows. Additionally, the reuse rate increased by about 5% between the third and fourth quarters, indicating improved network stickiness and user retention rates—an important metric as the network aims not only to convert new users but also to increase usage among existing users, creating multiple vectors for compound growth.

While work on the network continues to trend upward, the RNDR tokens used in the fourth quarter exhibited a more active pattern compared to the third quarter, with little change between the RNDR used in the third quarter and that used in the fourth quarter of 2022.

A similar situation can be seen in year-over-year comparisons: while the frames rendered in the fourth quarter of 2022 saw a significant increase compared to the fourth quarter of last year, the RNDR used remained nearly flat, with 498,309 RNDR used in the fourth quarter of 2021 and 498,733 RNDR used in the fourth quarter of 2022.

In the third quarter of 2022, the network's failure rate dropped significantly from 6% to 3% in the fourth quarter. The failure rate is one of the most important indicators of network scalability. Due to the automated nature of blockchain smart contracts, reducing the failure rate is crucial for maintaining a network that can grow in a decentralized manner without human intervention. As the network prepares to implement the Burn Mint Balance (BME), it simplifies and automates many parts of the process of purchasing tokens and paying node operators, making the reduction of failure rates a critical factor for operating the network at scale.

With the statistical growth of rendering usage, the Render Network community has continued to expand in the last months of 2022 and into 2023! Similar to the network itself, almost all community platforms saw growth from the second half of the fourth quarter of 2022 to the beginning of 2023.

Highlights include the Render Network Twitter account gaining approximately 3,000 new followers in November 2022 alone, resulting in an overall follower growth of 5% compared to all new followers gained in the third quarter of 2022, with November's follower count increasing by about 300%. The cyclical rapid growth of social influence became evident in early 2023.

The growth on social media began to accelerate in the first month of 2023, with nearly 10,000 new followers in just the past 30 days—an overall growth of about 15%, doubling the growth rate from November, and creating a 300% increase from November to January, with follower growth rates increasing month over month.

At the end of 2022, with the release of Octane 2022 on the network in late December, the Render Network platform launched significant updates. This is a harbinger of future changes, such as the foundation and voting on the BME tokenomics model, which are expected to have a tangible impact on network usage statistics in the coming months. Coupled with the increased output of tutorials that began rolling out in recent weeks and will continue in the coming months, network adoption is expected to maintain an upward trend in the next quarter and beyond.

Through these current initiatives, improvements and enhancements are being made to the network to expand the diversity of workloads on the network—these include:

In the coming months, future Behind the Network (BTN) posts and foundational articles on the Render Network will provide detailed information on the development progress of these network additions. The network is ready to build on the momentum established at the end of 2022 and scale up in 2023.