The importance of ‘ghost rate’ in gauging meaningful adoption

cointelegraph.com:

All day I talk to founders in the blockchain category, and all day I hear the same thing — the importance of adoption. Adoption is what everyone is chasing at all costs. This makes sense since the resiliency, overall network effect and ultimately the value of a blockchain rely on people using the infrastructure to transact with one another, at scale. 

These founders have built roads that currently lead to a massive, undeveloped landscape. So, wanting to focus on adoption is perfectly sensible and reasonable.

But what constitutes meaningful adoption? A growing user base is great, but it does not automatically indicate meaningful, sustainable adoption. The longevity of any blockchain depends on more than just simply onboarding users. Founders should focus primarily on users who engage with the blockchain significantly and consistently — this is more challenging than staying on top of simple metrics like the number of wallets created or the number of NFTs dropped.

That’s why I’m proposing a new key metric for the blockchain industry that I believe is more reflective of meaningful adoption than the number of transactions and new wallets. I call this metric the ghost rate. Before diving into the specifics, let’s revisit the definition of its well-known cousin, the bounce rate. Bounce rate refers to the percentage of visitors who navigate away from a website after viewing only one page.

It’s an important measurement of user engagement. A high bounce rate typically indicates an offputting or confusing user experience, while sites that do a good job of providing value to users will tend to retain them, leading to more pages viewed per visit, more return visits and a correspondingly lower bounce rate.  

I see ghost rate working