CoinMarketCap.com has been the largest cryptocurrency market capitalization aggregator online for years, but CoinGecko, a competing aggregator, is closing in on the number one spot.
Although CoinMarketCap still remains number one in this space, CoinGecko is very quickly approaching the established leader. It is, however, using a different strategy to attract users to its platform.
Taking a Look at the Numbers
When you break down the website traffic that each aggregator receives, a much stronger picture emerges. CoinMarketCap shows notable stagnation while CoinGecko is witnessing mass acceleration.
Revisiting web traffic from May of this year shows that CoinGecko only received 8.75 million monthly users compared with CoinMarketCap’s 32.8 million, a 375% increase in favor of the latter.
As 2020 progressed, both platforms began to see an increase in users, most likely due to the favorable price increases since the pandemic-induced crash. Although web traffic for both has since increased, CoinGecko has been receiving it at a much higher rate.
The websites peaked (for the year) in July according to the total number of monthly users. CoinGecko brought in 27 million interactions compared with CoinMarketCap’s 46 million interactions.
As the bigger platform, CoinMarketCap brought in more users at the peak, but CoinGecko increased its user growth by a vastly larger percentage. What follows next may speak to the loyalty of the platform and what it can offer its users.
Following this peak, there was a decline in user traffic on both sites, but CoinMarketCap was hit significantly harder, possibly due to a management shakeup.
According to similarweb.com. since its peak web traffic, CoinMarketCap has dropped to 29 million monthly interactions compared with CoinGecko’s 22 million monthly visits.
Since the beginning of May, CoinMarketCap has actually decreased its number of monthly interactions, which can’t be said of its threatening competitor.
CoinGecko’s DeFi Advantage
Some argue that it’s not that CoinMarketCap is doing anything wrong, but more about what CoinGecko is doing right.
Indeed, decentralized finance (DeFi) has likely played more of a role in attracting users in 2020. Total value locked (TVL) has increased from less than $1 billion at the beginning of the year to now over $15 billion.
Many of the smaller and more obscure DeFi coins are not listed on CoinMarketCap making CoinGecko one of the few alternatives for aggregated data on the emerging space.
Some in the crypto community also see Binance’s acquisition of CoinMarketCap as a downside in terms of decentralization.
It’s unlikely that CoinGecko will be the new market leader before the year is up. However, if DeFi continues to grow from strength to strength, that crown may topple in 2021.
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