In DeFi, user touchpoints span social media, websites, ads, decentralized applications (dApps), and onchain — all part of a single user journey. Marketing attribution and capturing key touchpoints help you understand which channels, messages, and moments truly influence user decisions. Without this visibility, you risk wasting resources on ineffective campaigns and missing opportunities to double down on what works. 

Understanding the entire multi-step journey is just as crucial as the final conversion — and that’s exactly what Web3 marketing attribution helps you uncover. Web3 attribution connects user interactions to verifiable and meaningful impact on-chain. Onchain attribution bridges Web2 and Web3 analytics, giving growth and marketing teams a unified, privacy-friendly view of the customer journey.

In this guide, we’ll break down:

• Why Web3 marketing attribution matters for crypto and DeFi growth.

• The top attribution models — from first-touch to multi-touch and custom models.

• How to combine UTM links, wallet tracking, and onchain data for precise onchain attribution.

• How tools like Formo unify analytics across websites, social media, dApps, and blockchains to help you measure ROI more effectively in web3.

User acquisition is one of the biggest problems in crypto. For an app to succeed, it must have sustainable unit economics when it comes to user acquisition. The lifetime revenue of a user (LTV) should be greater than the cost to acquire them (CAC) at a healthy multiple.

Whether you’re running crypto ad campaigns, NFT drops, or DeFi launches, mastering Web3 attribution will help you understand what truly drives conversions and optimize your marketing for maximum impact.

Key Takeaways

1. Web3 attribution unifies offchain and onchain touchpoints for a complete view of the user journey.

2. Wallet addresses replace personal data, enabling privacy-friendly tracking.

3. Attribution models such as first-touch, last-touch, linear, and custom models reveal your true conversion drivers.

4. UTM tracking, wallet connections, and smart contract events form the foundation of onchain attribution.

5. Use data platforms like Formo to consolidate your analytics across dApps, websites, and social channels.

Web3 Marketing Attribution helps builders and marketers understand which marketing tactics drive conversions. 

What is Web3 Marketing Attribution?

Web3 marketing attribution is the process of tracking and analyzing user interactions across multiple touchpoints — from ads to wallet connections to onchain transactions. Attribution identifies which marketing activities and channels generate conversions and ROI.

Where Web2 analytics focuses on cookies, accounts, and offchain activity, Web3 attribution adds:

• Onchain user behavior (wallet connections, message signing, transactions, DeFi positions, token balances).

• Smart contract events tied to UTM campaign sources.

• Multi-chain dapp and token data across Ethereum, Polygon, Base, and more.

Example: A DeFi app launches an X campaign for their new yield vault. Attribution tools track the entire journey: tweet click → website visit → wallet connection → vault deposit. This visibility enables marketing teams to optimize spend and measure performance / ROI.

Example of a Web3 attribution user journey

Why Should We Care About Web3 Marketing Attribution?

Example of a Web3 data-driven attribution model

Without accurate attribution, you are lost in the dark forest. Attribution helps answer:

• Where did users come from?

• What meaningful activity did users perform on my app?

• How well are users monetizing? How much revenue did I make? (ARPU, LTV)

• How long are users sticking around? (Retention, Churn)

• Is my ROI for an acquisition channel positive? (LTV > CAC)

Marketing attribution analyzes which channels and content types drive engagement and conversions, helping you to better understand your audience based on real data rather than assumptions.

Cross-Platform Insights

Today’s crypto user journey spans multiple worlds. Web3 attribution provides a unified view of user behavior across:

• Web2: Websites, social media, and mobile apps

• Web3: dApp, protocols, and the DeFi ecosystem

Web3 attribution integrates onchain data with traditional tracking methods. The unified user journey reveals, how a Twitter ad leads to a wallet connection and an onchain conversion.

Cross-platform attribution helps builders and marketers gain a comprehensive, data-driven understanding of how users move through the user journey—from discovering a product to making an onchain purchase or interacting with your app. 

Privacy-Focused Tracking

Web3 attribution tracks user interactions using wallet addresses instead of PII (personally identifiable information), ensuring users remain in control of their data. Blockchain transactions are public, transparent, and immutable. Analyzing onchain data enables web3 product and marketing teams to access actionable audience insights without violating privacy concerns. 

Instead of tracking emails or names, Web3 attribution uses wallet addresses — providing transparency while respecting privacy.

Accurate ROI Measurement

In traditional marketing, connecting ad spending to conversions can be challenging due to fragmented data across multiple platforms. Web3 attribution solves a similar challenge by linking key onchain and offchain touchpoints to specific campaigns and channels. 

For example, you can tracking how:

• An ad influences NFT sales, 

• A quest impacts DEX volume, or

• How referrals increase DeFi TVL 

Web3 attribution helps you effectively measure your true onchain ROI by mapping the entire user journey. 

This reduces guesswork and improves budget allocation.

Web3 Marketing Attribution Models

Attribution in web3 is complex. Consider the following example user journey for a DEX called FooSwap with many touchpoints:

• A user sees an tweet thread about an app on X (“referrer”) clicks on a referral link

• The user visits the app’s website (fooswap.com)

• The user visits the app (app.fooswap.com)

• The user connects their wallet on the app

• The user signs a token approval message

• The user starts a swap transaction but the wallet has insufficient gas

• The user abandons their transaction (“dropoff”)

• The user revisits the app from another channel on Farcaster (“referrer”)

• The user completes a swap transaction (“conversion”) emitting an onchain event

In this example, two touchpoints contribute to the successful conversion: X and Farcaster. Using an attribution model, we can assign different weights to these touchpoints to determine their relative importance in the conversion:

• Using first touch model, the complete conversion can be attributed to X and the referral

• Using last touch model, the complete conversion can be attributed to Farcaster

• Using a linear attribution model, we could assign a weight of 0.5 to each touchpoint, meaning that both X and Farcaster contributed equally to the conversion

Data-driven attribution is key to measuring your true ROI

Formo helps you understand the impact of each touchpoints in each user journey, whether with first or last touch (single-touch attribution) or across multiple touchpoints using multi-touch attribution.

Web3 First-Touch Attribution

This attribution model credits 100% of the conversion to the first interaction a user has with your app.

 Example:

• A user discovers your DeFi project through a Twitter thread and later deposits into a vault after exploring your Discord and website. Under first-touch attribution, Twitter gets full credit for the conversion.

Best for:

• Demand generation campaigns

• Brand awareness tracking

• Measuring the impact of top-of-funnel marketing

Limitations:

• Ignores the role of later interactions in driving conversion.

• Not ideal for complex, multi-step conversion journeys.

Web3 first-touch attribution

Web3 Last-Touch Attribution

This attribution model credits 100% of the conversion to the final touchpoint before the user converts.

Example:

• A user clicks a Telegram announcement link that leads directly to a minting page and makes a purchase. Telegram is credited entirely for the conversion — even if the user discovered your project earlier on Farcaster or YouTube.

Best for:

• Conversion-focused campaigns

• Determining which channels close the most deals or transactions

Limitations:

• Ignores early discovery and awareness channels that may have sparked initial interest.

Web3 last-touch attribution

Web3 Linear Attribution

A multi-touch model that equally distributes credit across all touchpoints in the user’s journey. This method works well for understanding the impact of multiple onchain and offchain interactions.

Example:

• If a user discovered your project on Farcaster, joined Discord, clicked an email, and then made a purchase, each channel gets 25% credit.

Best for:

• Understanding the overall influence of each channel

• Projects with long, multi-channel user journeys

Limitations:

• May over-credit low-impact touchpoints that played a minimal role.

Web3 linear attribution

Web3 Position-Based Attribution (U-Shaped Model)

This model assigns 40% credit to the first and last touchpoints, with the remaining 20% split evenly among all other interactions in between.
Example:

• First touch: Farcaster post (40%)

• Last touch: Email with mint link (40%)

• Middle touches: Discord Q&A and YouTube demo (20% split evenly)

Best for:

• Balancing brand discovery with final conversion triggers

• Teams wanting a more nuanced view than single-touch models

Web3 position-based attribution

Web3 Custom Attribution 

This model lets you define custom weightings based on onchain analytics and engagement data.

The most flexible and sophisticated model, custom attribution helps you to define your weighting system based on your own requirements. This is perfect for teams with access to advanced funnels and analytics tools.

Example:

• A custom model assigns more weight to wallet connection events and message signing since they signal higher intent.

• Give less weight to one-off visits from unverified or low-value wallet addresses.

Best for:

• Advanced growth teams with access to robust analytics tools

• Projects with unique user flows or conversion paths

Web3 custom attribution

Key Metrics in Web3 Marketing Attribution

In addition to model selection, tracking key performance metrics ensures your attribution insights are actionable:

Example of Web3 marketing attribution analytics

Let’s say you're the growth lead at a DeFi protocol and you're launching a new staking feature. Your goal is to drive users to stake their tokens through a dApp, and you want to know which marketing tactics and channels work.

Here’s how you might approach attribution in a Web3-native way.

Goal:
Drive wallet connections and first staking transactions for a new DeFi protocol.

Channels Used

You roll out the campaign across 4 different platforms:

1. Twitter/X
   You run a series of promo threads with eye-catching content and clear CTAs like “Stake now to earn up to 15% APY.”
   → Audience: broad, attention-grabbing

2. Farcaster
   You post a launch announcement on Warpcast, targeting devs, DAO participants, and early adopters who already understand crypto.
   → Audience: crypto-native, niche, influential

3. YouTube
   You sponsor a top DeFi YouTuber to do a full breakdown of your staking product, including how-to instructions and a referral link.
   → Audience: educable, trust-driven, long-form

4. Discord
   You announce the launch organically in your protocol’s server and ping power users.
   → Audience: existing community, loyal but smaller base

Step-by-Step Onchain Attribution Setup

Follow this tracking flow to make sure you can track where staking activity comes from:

1. UTM-Tagged Campaign Links

For each channel, you create custom links that include UTM parameters.

These links ensure that when a user visits your app, the source of the traffic is captured in Web3 marketing attribution tools such as Formo Analytics.

2. Web3 Form or Session Capture

Once a user lands on your staking dApp:

• They connect their wallet to access the staking interface.

• The dApp logs their wallet address and UTM parameters in session storage or your backend.

• Optionally, you can use a Formo form to ask for additional context (e.g., “Where did you hear about us?”) and link that to their wallet address.

This step links anonymous traffic → wallet address → campaign source.

3. Onchain Event Tracking

Finally, you monitor smart contract events for wallet addresses that:

• Approve your staking contract

• Submit a successful stake transaction

• Interact with your protocol in other measurable ways (e.g. claim rewards)

You now map these onchain events back to the original traffic source by matching:

• Wallet address

• Session info with UTM/campaign source

Example Attribution Insights

Onchain Attribution Campaign Insights

Here's what the onchain attribution data tells you:

YouTube

• Conversion rate: 13.5% of visitors staked

• Avg Stake: $500

• Insight: The creator's explanation helped build trust, driving both volume and quality.
  
  
  

Farcaster

• Conversion rate: 15% (highest!)

• Avg Stake: $500

• Insight: Smaller audience but highly aligned. Farcaster users are power users who trust crypto-native launches.

Twitter

• Conversion rate: 10%

• Avg Stake: $400

• Insight: High visibility but lower average stake, showing wider but less committed traffic.

Discord

• Conversion rate: 10%

• Avg Stake: $300

• Insight: Loyal community engaged early but tends to stake smaller amounts—likely already holding or farming elsewhere.

Formo’s Web3 Attribution Advantage

Formo’s Onchain Attribution Analytics gives Web3 marketing  teams:

• Deep insights into user behavior

• Unified Web2 and Web3 user journey tracking.

• Privacy-friendly wallet and transaction attribution.

• Multi-chain and multi-channel ROI insights.

Formo offers a comprehensive view of the user journey, ensuring your team stays ahead in the Web3 marketing landscape. By combining UTM tracking, wallet analytics, and smart contract event monitoring, you can optimize campaigns, increase conversions, and grow sustainably. 

Web3 marketing attribution isn’t just about tracking traffic sources. It’s about understanding onchain behavior, community-driven engagement, and cross-platform touchpoints. By using the right attribution models, tracking the right metrics, and leveraging tools like Formo, you can build data-driven growth strategies that maximize both conversion rates and lifetime user value.

Let data chart your path to product-led growth.

Read  

• What is UTM? How It Helps Your Web3 Analytics and Attribution

• The Benefits of Onchain Attribution in Web3 Marketing

• Wallet Analytics: Turbocharge Your Growth with Onchain Data

Follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter, and join our community to learn how Formo turbocharges growth for leading teams across web3!

Additional FAQs

1. What is Web3 marketing attribution?

Web3 marketing attribution is the process of tracking and analyzing user interactions across multiple touchpoints — from Web2 ads and social media to wallet connections and onchain transactions — to determine which marketing activities drive conversions and ROI. Unlike traditional attribution, Web3 attribution uses wallet addresses instead of cookies or device identifiers, making it privacy-friendly while giving marketers a unified view of the customer journey.

2. How does Web3 marketing attribution work?

It works by linking campaign traffic to verifiable onchain actions through:

• UTM-tagged links to track traffic sources.

• Wallet connections to identify unique users without collecting personal data.

• Smart contract event tracking to confirm conversions like NFT mints, token swaps, or staking.

This creates an end-to-end view of the journey — from the first click to the final onchain transaction.

2. Can I track multi-chain user activity in one place?
Yes, advanced onchain attribution platforms like Formo support multi-chain analytics, allowing you to track user interactions across Ethereum, Base, Polygon, and other networks.

3. Why is Web3 attribution better than traditional attribution for crypto and DeFi?

Because wallet interactions are onchain and verifiable, there’s no guesswork. You can attribute staking, minting, or governance actions directly to specific campaigns and sources with high accuracy.

Traditional marketing attribution relies on centralized data sources like cookies, IP tracking, and email sign-ups. These methods fail in Web3 because conversions happen onchain.
Web3 attribution solves this by:

• Using wallet addresses as unique identifiers.

• Tracking multi-chain, multi-platform activity (e.g., Ethereum, Polygon, Base).

• Measuring real, verifiable transactions instead of inferred conversions.

This leads to more accurate ROI measurement and more efficient budget spending.

4. Is it possible to measure organic vs. paid traffic in Web3 campaigns?
Yes. By combining UTM-tagged links, session data, and wallet interactions, you can differentiate organic Discord traffic from paid Farcaster or Twitter ads — even if both users connect wallets later.

5. How can attribution insights inform community-building strategies?
By identifying which touchpoints lead to high-LTV users or retained wallet activity, you can tailor incentives, refine onboarding, and create personalized journeys for each segment (e.g., devs vs. retail users).

4. What are the most common Web3 marketing attribution models?

The main models include:

• First-Touch Attribution – Credits the first interaction (good for demand generation).

• Last-Touch Attribution – Credits the final step before conversion (good for conversion-focused campaigns).

• Linear Attribution – Gives equal credit to all touchpoints.

• Position-Based (U-Shaped) – Weights first and last interactions higher.

• Custom Attribution – Uses custom weightings based on onchain analytics and engagement metrics.

5. What tools can I use for Web3 marketing attribution?

Some popular tools include:

• Formo – Combines Web2 and Web3 analytics, linking UTMs, wallet addresses, and smart contract data in one dashboard.

• Dune Analytics – Custom onchain analytics queries.

• Nansen – Wallet behavior analysis and segmentation.

• Google Analytics 4 (GA4) – Tracks offchain activity, which can be integrated with Web3 tools for a complete view.

Choosing the right tool depends on your need for real-time onchain data, cross-platform analytics, and integration capabilities.

6. How do I start tracking Web3 attribution for my project?

Follow these steps:

1. Set up UTM-tagged campaign links for all marketing channels.

2. Capture wallet connections and associate them with UTM sources.

3. Track smart contract events for conversions (mints, swaps, stakes).

4. Analyze attribution reports to identify the highest-performing channels.

5. Refine campaigns based on the data for higher ROI.