Building a successful product is hard. It gets harder when you don't know how users use your product. For Web3 builders, understanding user behavior is crucial, but it's a significant challenge. Pseudonymity and disconnected data sources can make it feel like you're building in the dark.
This is where the "value moment" comes in. It's the specific action that shows a user has truly experienced your product's core benefit—the "aha!" that converts a curious visitor into a loyal user. Identifying this Web3 value moment is essential for growth, but it's not always straightforward.
This post provides a clear value moment definition for Web3, explains its importance, and shows you how to measure it.
What is a Web3 Value Moment?
A Web3 value moment is the key on-chain action where a user gets the core value from your dApp. It’s the point where your app's purpose "clicks," turning a passive observer into an active participant.
These moments are strong signals of user intent and product stickiness. Here are a few examples:
DeFi: A user completes their first swap on a DEX or stakes tokens in a yield protocol.
NFTs: A user mints an NFT from a new collection.
Gaming: A player wins their first on-chain tournament or crafts a valuable in-game asset.
Pinpointing your value moment helps you understand what truly matters to your users.
Why Identifying Value Moments is Critical in Web3
Tracking your Web3 value moment helps you focus your efforts on what actually drives growth and retention. Instead of getting lost in vanity metrics, you can concentrate on actions that create real value.
Key advantages include:
Better User Acquisition: Identify which marketing channels bring in users who reach the value moment, allowing you to double down on what works.
Smarter Onchain Attribution: Connect offchain campaigns, like a tweet or a blog post, to valuable on-chain actions. Finally, you can see the full journey from first touch to final transaction.
Improved Product Development: Understand which features lead to user activation. This data helps you prioritize your roadmap and build a product users love.
Traditional analytics tools like Google Analytics can't see onchain data, leaving you with a massive blind spot. A unified view of both on-chain and offchain data is necessary to truly understand your users' journey.
How to Measure Your Web3 Value Moment
To quantify your value moment, you need the right metrics. Effective Web3 analytics goes beyond surface-level numbers and focuses on actions that indicate genuine engagement.
Essential metrics to track include:
Transaction Volume: The total value processed by your protocol.
Total Value Locked (TVL): The value of assets secured in your smart contracts.
Unique Active Wallets: The number of distinct wallets interacting with your dApp.
Smart Contract Calls: The frequency of calls to your key contracts.
Measuring these metrics manually is a heavy lift. Platforms like Formo simplify the process by unifying your web, product, and on-chain data. This gives your team a clear picture of user behavior without needing a dedicated data team or complex SQL queries.
Find Your Path to Growth
Finding and measuring your Web3 value moment is essential for sustainable growth. It allows you to understand what's working, optimize your funnel, and build a better product. You can't improve what you don't measure.
Ready to find your value moment? See how Formo makes Web3 analytics easy.
FAQs
What is a Web3 value moment and how is it different from an aha moment?
A Web3 value moment is the first on-chain action a user takes that delivers your product's core promise, signaling they understand its utility. Unlike a traditional "aha moment," which is a feeling of insight, a value moment is a measurable, chain-recorded event like a wallet connection followed by a specific smart contract interaction. It marks the transition from user curiosity to active engagement.
Value Moment in Web2: A user realizes your tool can solve their problem.
Value Moment in Web3: A user executes their first swap on a DEX or mints their first item in a game.
How do I identify my dApp’s value moment using on-chain analytics?
To find your dApp's value moment, you need to analyze the actions of users who become long-term participants. Start by building funnels in your analytics tool to track the journey from first visit to key on-chain events. By comparing the behavior of retained users against those who churn, you can pinpoint the specific action that correlates with higher retention.
Define key user cohorts based on their sign-up week.
Analyze on-chain actions like a first trade, liquidity deposit, or governance vote.
Identify the action that most strongly correlates with long-term retention for your best user cohorts.
Which metrics should PMs track after defining a value moment?
After defining your value moment, focus on metrics that measure how effectively you guide new users to perform that key action. This helps you understand and improve your user activation and retention. Tracking these KPIs provides a clear view of your product’s health and growth potential.
Activation Rate: The percentage of new users who complete the value moment.
Time to Value: The average time it takes a new user to reach the value moment after their first visit.
Value Moment Retention: The percentage of users who perform the value moment and remain active in subsequent weeks.
