DappRadar: Web3 Growing For The Moment
When looking at new innovation and technology, it is often difficult to chart the progress. Is something growing and being adopted.
Often the main thrust of the problem is older metrics no longer work. Nevertheless, since that is all we have, the tendency is to try to make then fit. This can distort things.
Over time, new metrics are created. We saw with social media. Previously, there were concepts such as sales, revenues, or ratings. None of these really worked with that industry.
Here is where we saw the idea of time on site, pageviews, clicks, and other metrics start to arise. This was also tied to users.
What we are seeing with Web3 is no different. While it is the Internet, some of what was used in the past applies. However, there are also something that which are novel. For example, I am convinced that social media is going to contain finance as a part of the user experience. Are these numbers being tracked?
There is also the issue that not all Web3 is social media. Digital platforms come in different forms, as shown by Amazon which is not the same as Facebook or X.
In spite of the limitation, according to DappRadar, Web3 is seeing a significant jump.
Web3 Growing For The Moment
A new metric appears to be daily unique active wallets (dUAW). This is something that is evidently being charted.
It makes sense since activity tied to Web3 is usually through a wallet of some kind. If there is activity, we could use that as a basis for how much is taking place.
According to the report:
Q2 2024 has been a remarkable quarter for the dApp industry, reaching an all-time high of unique active wallets (UAW). We now have 10 million daily UAWs that connect and interact with dApps, marking a significant 40% increase since the last quarter.
As we can see, it breaks out the wallets by category. As a side note, this is not, in my view, going to be sustainable since there will be a merging of the activities. The same wallet will be used for social, DeFi, gaming, and a host of other use cases.
Nevertheless, there is a breakdown and we are starting to get some idea of trends.
We can see this as such:
The social sector has seen the most substantial increase, growing by 66% since the last quarter and averaging almost 2 million daily UAWs. This surge is largely driven by the current excitement around Web3 engagement, with popular dapps like Fantasy.top, UXLINK and our own launch of Quests capturing significant attention and usage.
Blockchain gaming continues to dominate the dapp industry, although its share has slightly decreased by 2% from the last quarter, similar to the DeFi sector. In contrast, the NFT and social sectors have both increased their market dominance, emerging as the leading trends of Q2 2024.
These are some impressive numbers and a positive trend.
DappRadar did question whether this would hold. It attributed a lot of the growth to the frenzy associated with airdrops. Perhaps this is the case and we will see a reversion to the mean.
Building Products And Services
The long term trend is going to be driven by one thing: the development of products and services.
If there is nothing for people to utilize, they will go elsewhere. This means that offering what interests people.
Web3 needs to replace what is presently on the Internet. That means becoming the epicenter for information, gaming, news, and entertainment (to name a few). If the majority of the population cannot find this on Web3, they will never utilize it.
This was no different from the early Internet.
Online shopping was not a thing until a variety of factors were met. The first was trust in giving one's credit card number on the Internet. For those old enough, there were people who swore they would never do that. Another was the establishment of enough sites where people could find what they desired. Of course, this entailed building supply chains and fulfillment centers.
All of this was required before online shopping could excel.
Ultimately, that was exactly what happened, yet it took time. People often overlook this part of the process. It is easy to look at things today without recalling how slow things were in the early days.
This is the point Web3 is at. We do not have a huge offering of products or services, especially as it compares to traditional online companies, to be a factor. Thus, to change the numbers requires business development.
In many areas this is happening which is why the long-term overall trend will continue to be up. We are not going to see any of this disappear. When we look past the "green candle gang" and see what people are actually building, it is a replay of 30 years ago.
Hence, we can look for Web3's version of Amazon and Google. They were not in business before the World Wide Web.
Today, they are two of the largest companies in the world based upon market capitalization.
Technological Transformation
There is a difference between new technology and something repackaged.
The smartphone was the fastest adoption rate in the US, at least up to that point. It went from 0% market share to 70% in just over 6 years. That was an incredible pace.
Here is the crux though: the smartphone wasn't new technology. It was actually the result of convergence. The smartphone was the combining of mobile, computing, and the Internet. All three were known to most people.
Thus, it was really something that was just packaged together.
The same is true for ChatGPT. That exploded onto the scene, getting 100 million users faster than any other application. The problem is this was also not new technology, at least to the user. Basically, when you prompt something, at least basic, it is nothing more than search.
People have been doing that on Google for almost 30 years.
New technology takes time to transform what people are doing. Part of the reason is a lot of infrastructure is required. Innovation is the driver, most of which fails. Out of that, thought, some successes break through.
Of course, technology is faster than human embracing of it. Here is where people's resistance to change enters. Only a small portion of the population qualifies as trailblazers. Most are of the "follow the crowd" mindset. They jump on board when everyone else does.
Web3 is completely new. This is where the approach is showing its flaws. For the moment, most of what is happening is a mirror of what already exists. Here is the first failure. Trying to promote something as a replacement for what already exists is not going to work. Something different is required.
Innovation is going to be the key. Most are going chance when they get something different. That is the key. YouTube did not become popular and destroy broadcast television. The growth came because people found something different as compared to what was out there. They were able to watch hours of cat videos, something the major media companies were not offering.
The lessons from history are clear.
Web3 is growing for the moment. Will this bump last? Maybe. However, it doesn't matter since there are many areas of development that will eventually offer services to online world.
Once this happens, the growth rates will be extended out for the next decade.
Posted Using InLeo Alpha
Wow brother, it's awesome to see how Web3 is evolving with new metrics like daily active wallets. I believe integrating finance into social media will reshape user engagement. Web 3 is the ultimate future and we need to work on it to make it happen.. you're no doubt the GOAT
When I talk to 'normies' about Bitcoin, Hive, or any other blockchain in general, they still don't get the idea of ownership and why it is so important. People have been brainwashed to think that someone else is supposed to take care of them and then they get all butt hurt when something doesn't work right and they have someone to blame and complain to. Basically the population has turned into a bunch of lazy "Karens".
People are scared to take ownership over their own money and data. They think they are safer letting someone else control it. Same thing that we were talking about the other day with infrastructure. People always want to rely on someone else to 'handle it'.
Web3 will start to grow when the mass population really sees the need to take back control over their money, AND data. For now, it's just a bunch of freedom loving nerds and a bunch of 'nUmBeR-gO-uP' morons, and will stay that way again until the masses see the need, or someone finally starts developing for every day people and not just developing for nerds and to impress other developers. We need a Web3 that is as easy to use as any Web2 platform out there. For now, we don't have that.
Just my dudely opinion on the subject...
Another financial crisis, followed by the forced conversion of bank credits into CBDCs could be what's needed for people to realize the benefits of personal data ownership.
Maybe, I am not very hopeful in the general population at the moment, haha. Most will look at CBDCs as some kind of “safety and security” or some BS like that.
True, the majority will probably think that way. But a growing minority will not be okay with it.
This is true, more and more people are starting to wake up.
I'd be more curious how that chart looks from 2021 and how close if at all close we are to matching the bull run of that time that would speak a lot.
I agree .😊 Just like Hive, I used it because it's different from the previous social media.
Dappradar list a load of 'social' chains with the Hive ones somewhere on the second page. Are they actually being used as I've never heard of most of them? Peakd + Ecency + Hive.blog show with about 2800 daily users. S-site about half that. InLeo is not on there.
The increase in the overall engagement and UAW is very encouraging. While the same wallets can be used for games, social, and other things, I think they only include it as active if they actually use it on an app under a category. I remember seeing Rising Star encouraging players to send .001 Hive to an account to get their Dappradar data accurately measured. I am a bit sad that Hive isn't included in their list of popular social apps.
I would argue that the situation for Web 3 is slightly different, because one of the motivators for its development was perceived bias on the large platforms. For example, shutting down discussions or demonetizing content in furtherance of political narratives or agendas to turn Web 2 into a propaganda machine for the establishment. One of the things people are looking for here is the same content they could find on Twitter or YouTube, but without the censorship. In this sense, duplication of functions is both good and expected.
But it should not be limited to that, for sure. Innovation should be the watchword for Web 3. But in part, it's an attempt to patch the flaws of Web 2 and enable freer expression.