Glossary: Onchain Attribution
Onchain attribution connects an acquisition source, campaign, partner, or referral to a wallet and a later onchain outcome while applying explicit identity, attribution-model, and attribution-window rules.
What is Onchain Attribution?
Onchain attribution connects an acquisition source, campaign, partner, or referral to a wallet and a later onchain outcome. It joins offchain touchpoints with wallet activity, then applies an attribution model and attribution window. The result should state the identity unit, eligible outcomes, persistence rules, and whether credit is reported by wallet, campaign, volume, or revenue.
Onchain Attribution Explained
Imagine you run a campaign across three different channels and suddenly your protocol gets a wave of new wallets connecting.
Which channel sent them?
Off-chain analytics can tell you where website traffic came from. But once a user connects their wallet and starts transacting, traditional tools lose the trail.
Onchain attribution picks it up from there.
It connects the dots between where a user came from and what they actually did on the blockchain, giving teams a complete picture of what is driving real results.
What Onchain Attribution Means For
Audience | Use Case |
|---|---|
Growth and marketing teams in Web3 | Attribute wallet activations and on-chain conversions to specific campaigns, referrers, or channels to measure true marketing ROI |
Protocol founders and product teams | Understand which acquisition sources bring users who actually transact, not just users who visit and leave without connecting a wallet |
Analysts and data teams | Build attribution models that combine off-chain traffic data with on-chain wallet behavior to create a complete view of the user acquisition journey |
Examples
A protocol tags referral links with unique identifiers and maps each new wallet connection back to the specific campaign or community that generated it.
A growth team uses onchain attribution to discover that users acquired through a Discord partnership have a transaction completion rate three times higher than users from paid social ads.
An analyst builds an attribution model combining UTM data with on-chain wallet activity to measure the full journey from first click to first transaction for each acquisition channel.
A token project uses onchain attribution to identify which community ambassadors are driving the highest quality wallet activations and increases their rewards accordingly.
Persistence and attribution rules
UTM parameters, referral codes, referrers, and ad identifiers must remain associated with the journey long enough to reach the measured outcome. First-touch and last-touch models can produce different answers, and cross-domain journeys need consistent identity persistence. Document the attribution window and how direct visits affect credit.
Wallet-level versus campaign-level attribution
Wallet-level attribution explains which source is associated with one wallet and its outcomes. Campaign-level attribution aggregates many attributed wallets and outcomes to evaluate a campaign. Volume attribution and revenue attribution describe the value being credited; they should not be substituted for wallet counts or conversion rates.
Related reading
Explore onchain attribution, Attribution Window, Wallet-Level Attribution, Campaign-Level Attribution, and the complete onchain attribution guide.
FAQs
Why is attribution harder in Web3 than in Web2?
Web2 attribution relies on cookies and sessions. Web3 users interact through wallets, which are pseudonymous and not tied to an identity, making it harder to connect off-chain behavior to on-chain actions.
What is the difference between onchain attribution and UTM tracking?
UTM tracking captures where traffic came from off-chain. Onchain attribution extends that by linking the traffic source to actual on-chain actions like wallet connections and transactions.
Can onchain attribution work without cookies?
Yes. Onchain attribution uses wallet addresses and on-chain data as identifiers rather than cookies, making it more durable as third-party cookies are phased out across the web.
What data is needed for onchain attribution?
A combination of off-chain traffic data such as UTM parameters and referrer information, plus on-chain wallet activity, transaction history, and smart contract interaction logs.
What tools support onchain attribution?
Platforms like Formo are built specifically for onchain attribution, combining web analytics with on-chain wallet data to give Web3 teams a complete view of their acquisition and conversion performance.
Related Terms
A/B Testing
An experiment that compares two versions of a page, feature, or campaign to see which performs better.
Account Abstraction
Account abstraction is an approach that turns blockchain accounts into programmable smart contract wallets, enabling features like gasless transactions, social recovery, session keys, and paying fees in any token.
Activation Rate
Activation rate is the percentage of new users or wallets that complete a key activation milestone, such as a first transaction, out of all users who signed up or connected within a given period.
Active Users
Active users are distinct users, accounts, visitors, wallets, or wallet clusters that complete a defined meaningful action during a specified period; the chosen identity unit and activity rule determine the result.
The data platform onchain apps
Get actionable analytics and attribution for crypto and DeFi.
The data platform for onchain apps. Stay up to date with product updates and industry insights.
Platform
Use cases