Creators create and sell NFTs on Zora. They receive a cut of the primary sales (supply-side fees).

Zora is a non-custodial NFT minting protocol built on Ethereum and launched in 2021.

Team and investors own and govern the protocol. They currently take a cut the primary sales paid by collectors (revenue).

github

twitter

discord

website

NFT marketplaces

Zora

# Zora Average fees per user (AFPU) Methodology

## 1. Overview

Average Fees Per User (AFPU) measures the average revenue generated per active user on the Zora NFT marketplace protocol on a daily basis. This metric divides total daily fees collected by the protocol by the number of daily active users across all supported chains (Ethereum, Optimism, and Base). AFPU helps assess the monetization efficiency of the platform and tracks revenue per user trends over time.

## 2. Data sources

The calculation relies on several categories of blockchain data:

- **Zora protocol event logs**: Parsed smart contract events from Zora v1 protocol across Ethereum, Optimism, and Base chains, including `Sale` events from ERC721 drops, `Purchased` events from ERC1155 contracts, and `MintFeePayout` events for fee tracking
- **User activity events**: `CreatedDrop` events from Factory contracts and `SetupNewContract` events that identify drop creators and contract deployers
- **Transaction data**: Native token amounts from mint purchases and fee payments embedded in the event logs
- **External price data**: End-of-day token price feeds for converting native tokens (ETH, WETH) to USD values
- **Token metadata**: Native token contract addresses for each supported chain to enable proper decimal correction and price conversion

## 3. Step-by-step calculation

### Component A: Daily active user calculation

- **Purpose**: Count unique users interacting with the Zora protocol each day across all supported chains
- **Logic**: Extract user addresses from multiple event types including NFT minters from `Sale` and `Purchased` events, and drop creators from `CreatedDrop` and `SetupNewContract` events. Users are categorized by activity type (Minter or Drop Creator) and deduplicated using HyperLogLog aggregation to handle large-scale distinct counting efficiently. The calculation spans Ethereum, Optimism, and Base chains and aggregates users at the daily level.
- **Key fields**: `user_address` (from various `to`, `sender`, `creator` parameters), `block_timestamp` for daily aggregation, `chain` for cross-chain tracking, `user_type` for categorization

### Component B: Fee collection calculation  

- **Purpose**: Calculate total fees generated by the protocol from both direct fee payouts and mint purchase amounts
- **Logic**: Combine two revenue streams - mint fees from `MintFeePayout` events that track protocol fees, and total purchase amounts from actual mint transactions (`Sale` events for ERC721 tokens, `Purchased` events for ERC1155 tokens). For ERC721 mints, the amount equals quantity multiplied by price per token. For ERC1155 mints, the total value is captured directly. All amounts are converted from native tokens to USD using end-of-day price feeds and corrected for token decimal precision.
- **Key fields**: `mintFeeAmount` from fee payout events, `quantity` and `pricePerToken` from ERC721 sales, `value` from ERC1155 purchases, `token_address` for price conversion, `block_timestamp` for daily aggregation

### Component C: Trading volume aggregation

- **Purpose**: Combine fee payouts and mint amounts into total trading volume that represents protocol fees
- **Logic**: Union fee payout amounts with mint purchase amounts to create a comprehensive view of all money flowing through the protocol. Each transaction is tagged with metadata including chain, business segment, NFT type, and contract addresses. The combined amounts undergo USD conversion using chain-specific native token addresses and end-of-day exchange rates.
- **Key fields**: `amount` (unified field for both fee payouts and mint values), `token_address` for price lookup, `nft_type` for categorization, `chain` for segmentation

### Final aggregation

- **Combining components**: Daily active users are aggregated using HyperLogLog merge operations across all dimensions (chain, user type, product). Total fees are summed daily across all chains and converted to USD. The final AFPU calculation divides total daily fees by total daily active users using the `calculate_arpu` macro.
- **Currency conversion**: All native token amounts are converted to USD using end-of-day price feeds with proper decimal adjustment for each token type. Chain-specific native token contracts are mapped (ETH on Ethereum, WETH on Optimism and Base).
- **Time aggregation**: Data is aggregated to daily boundaries using timestamp truncation, with missing days filled with zeros to ensure continuous time series data.
- **Final calculation**: AFPU = Total Daily Fees (USD) ÷ Total Daily Active Users, with appropriate handling for days with zero users to avoid division errors. The result represents the average revenue generated per active user on the Zora protocol.

*This methodology was automatically generated by Token Terminal's methodology analyzer.*

ZoraZORA

Average fees per user (AFPU)

Average fees per user (AFPU)

Competitive landscape