📊 $DOT Market Cap Declines as Critics Raise Concerns Over Ecosystem Traction
The Q1 2025 report from Messari indicates a significant slowdown in transaction activity within the Polkadot ecosystem, with a 36.9% quarter-over-quarter drop to 137.1 million transactions. Critics argue that Polkadot’s performance does not match the expectations set by its funding and hype.
🔸 Mixed Developer Activity
According to Messari’s State of Polkadot Q1 2025 report, transaction activity within the Polkadot ecosystem slowed in the quarter, dropping 36.9% quarter-over-quarter to 137.1 million. The drop is attributed to more efficient transaction processing by Neuroweb, which was introduced in the first quarter. Despite the quarterly decline in transactions, three Polkadot-based networks — namely Moonbeam, Mythos, and Peaq — all maintained positive momentum.
To illustrate, the Messari report indicates that Moonbeam processed 16.7 million transactions during the quarter, up 6.5% quarter-over-quarter. That made up 12.2% of all transactions across the ecosystem. On the other hand, transactions on Mythos increased 12% quarter-over-quarter to 12.3 million during the quarter, accounting for 9% of all ecosystem activity. Peaq increased 84% quarter-over-quarter to 10.1 million in Q1 2025, representing 7.4% of ecosystem transactions.
However, the data shows total monthly active addresses across the Polkadot ecosystem declined from 610,000 to 529,900, a 13.1% quarter-over-quarter decrease. Developer activity, on the other hand, was mixed with the number of average weekly active core developers rising to 122, a 1.5% increase. In contrast, average weekly active ecosystem developers “fell 5.7% to 421, while average weekly ecosystem commits dropped 14.4% to just over 3,000.”
During the quarter, several steps were taken to improve developer experience and onboarding new contributors, including the launch of the PAPI Console, a new interface for developers to interact with chains more easily.