For the communities of Ethereum, EOS and TRON, the creation of the ‘killer dApp’ is hoped to bring in new converts and introduce crypto to the mass market; the often-lauded phrase is ‘adoption’.

Ethereum is the grandad of platforms but EOS and TRON are hot on its heels. dApp usage and creation provides a useful measurement for how well projects are doing to increase crypto adoption and create real use cases for their currencies. It also provides a vital insight as to how cryptocurrencies can be used beyond mere speculation and trading.



Does Size Matter?

So, who is winning the race? The most obvious metric to look at would be the amount of dApps on each platform. According to data from Dappradar, Ethereum has 1374, EOS 314 and TRON 137 dApps. That settles it! Ethereum has won, with over 4 times as many dApps than EOS and over 10 times that of Tron, surely that seals the deal.

However, Ethereum is the oldest and therefore has the advantage. Even though it wins when measured by the amount of dApps; as always, the devil is in the detail.



The Devil is in the Detail

Perhaps a better metric for success would be that of usage/adoption. As of the 07/02/19 the dApp with the most users per day was Epic Dragons (7,800 users) which is based on the TRON platform. EOS and TRON monopolise the top 10 dApps (EOS 4 and TRON 6). The most popular Ethereum dApp is at number 25 (MyCryptoHeroes).

If you then dive a little deeper in to the usage statistics, you will notice that the clear majority of Ethereum dApps only have 1 or 2 users with many of the having 0.

Moreover, Ethereum has 25 dApps with 100+ daily users and only 1 of these has daily users exceeding 1000. Whereas, EOS has 48 dApps with 100+ and 20 dApps with 1000+ daily users. TRON too is doing a lot better than Ethereum with 27 dApps with 100+ and 18 dApps with 1000+ daily users. Clearly, if success is measured by dApp usage then EOS and TRON would be the only ones who are achieving success.

Is Anyone Winning?

When looking at data it is important to put things in context. Statistics showing how many people own cryptocurrencies is hard to come by, but Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong stated that Coinbase had 25 million customers worldwide (August 2018). Given that Coinbase is but one of a many exchanges, it is likely that the amount of people owning crypto is much higher.



Which brings us back to the question of, who is winning? In comparison to other dApps , Epic Dragons’ 7,800 users look amazing but when compared to the amount of people in the crypto world it is not even a drop in the ocean.



Finally, dApps are still very early in their development and we have a long way to go. The most successful dApps are related to games or gambling, but to achieve a mass adoption the variety and the scalability of dApps needs to improve.

Image Source: “Pixabay”