How you masure Growth in Early-Stage NFT Projects Without Vanity Metrics

AshishS · 2025-11-06T11:51:29+00:00

I’m leading growth for a small NFT project in India—art-based, not PFP. The founders want quick traction, but our Dune dashboard shows mostly speculative traffic. We’ve had 1,200 mints and 9,000 Discord joins, yet only 120 wallets actually engage post-mint. The team keeps asking for “Twitter numbers,” but I want to track meaningful community health. What metrics should an early-stage NFT project actually prioritize? Should I be reporting Discord engagement, repeat wallet interactions, or secondary sales? I’m trapped between satisfying investors who love vanity metrics vs. setting up a real growth loop. How do you convince non-technical founders that quality > quantity when you don’t have massive traction yet?

How you masure Growth in Early-Stage NFT Projects Without Vanity Metrics

AshishS
@Web3SecurityPro

Updated: Nov 7, 2025

Views: 61

I’m leading growth for a small NFT project in India—art-based, not PFP. The founders want quick traction, but our Dune dashboard shows mostly speculative traffic. We’ve had 1,200 mints and 9,000 Discord joins, yet only 120 wallets actually engage post-mint.
The team keeps asking for “Twitter numbers,” but I want to track meaningful community health. What metrics should an early-stage NFT project actually prioritize? Should I be reporting Discord engagement, repeat wallet interactions, or secondary sales?
I’m trapped between satisfying investors who love vanity metrics vs. setting up a real growth loop. How do you convince non-technical founders that quality > quantity when you don’t have massive traction yet?

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Web3WandererAva

@Web3Wanderer • 3w

I’d recommend a “Proof of Value” framework—borrowed from Web2 SaaS. Map your NFT user actions into tiers: Explorer (minted once), Participant (joined DAO or quest), and Contributor (listed or collaborated). You can track that on Dune or Notion. Once founders see the conversion funnel, it reframes “growth” as progressive participation, not hype.

Olivia Smith

@SmartOlivia • 2w

You’re right to question vanity metrics. For early NFT projects, the North Star metric isn’t follower count—it’s “active wallets per collection.” We used Nansen to define cohorts of repeat buyers. When we focused on growing that number, secondary volume increased 2.4x organically. Show your founders the difference between social hype and wallet retention. Nothing beats a retention dashboard that speaks in on-chain data, not screenshots.

Andria Shines

@ChainSage • 2w

I convinced a founder by visualizing funnel metrics on Metabase: from Mint → Discord Active → On-chain Transaction → Marketplace Listing.

Show how only 10% reach the final stage. Once visualized, even investors start asking better questions. Visual proof converts skeptics faster than strategy docs.