Matthew effect also exists in Tron. The №1 DApp TRONbet simply performs way better than any other DApp on Tron. In the past few days, TRONbet has been constantly breaking its own record — on December 15, its transaction volume was more than 1.4BN Tron, and the single-day dividends was more than 300K USD. In other words, the team made somewhere between 70k and 85k USD in one day.

3. The development of DApps, past, present, and future

Regardless what people think in the past, more and more people believe that there will be a wave of DApps explosion waiting ahead.

As one of the earliest participants in the DApp world, DappReview observed all the ups and downs in the DApp world in the past year. We consider CryptoKitties the only DApp that gained true popularity. How do we define true popularity? We think the only way to judge is how many non-crypto people are brought into the crypto world by that DApp, as the crypto circle is really smaller than you think and needs new blood.

Some stats here: Fomo3D, a game went viral in July, only had fewer than 30k users, while the core users in EOS Dapps also only had 40k. We can say with considerate certainty that participants in either one comes from the existing pool rather than from new blood. CryptoKitties, in contrary, had more than 200k+ ETH addresses interacted with its smart contracts, and many addresses were newly registered.

I still remember that back in December last year when I posted about my Christmas special breed on the WeChat Moments, many friends who had no clue what cryptocurrency is, private messaged me about how to purchase a cat. They went through all the thresholds — wallet, exchange, etc., — and became token holders and bought their first Kitty.

The heyday of DApps was April to June this year — way more popular than now. Three large Chinese engines, Cocos, Laya, and Egret, all step into the blockchain industry, trying to secure their own shares. Loom and Enjin also had frequent updates and exposure. All at a sudden, a hundred flowers blossomed.

The participants in DApp conferences at that time often included mainstream content providers in the traditional gaming industry. Pathetically, the participants in the DApp conferences in China nowadays are mostly the wallets, crypto media, and heavy players.

Cocos Developer Salon, Shanghai stop, May 2018

At Cocos Developer Salon in Shanghai this May, Zhe Wang, founder of Cocos, told me: “You may think these developers are all so enthusiastic now, but 80% will disappear at the end.” It only took 6 months before his words came true. The first batch of the DApp developers mostly left. Even if a very small group of them was still trying to stay, these folks all went into the gambling DApps development on EOS and TRON.

Seeing the whole cycle, undoubtedly I had mixed feelings. I still remember those conversations with developers about how to make games more fun by adding blockchain, why store certain things on chain, and what are the technical challenges. Yet, I’ve been receiving more and more messages like these recently:

“I’ve completely lost my faith on Blockchain.” “No real users; simply just can’t survive.” “I’m thinking about going back to do globalization of mobile games.” …

So on and so forth.

Meanwhile, as this older batch of developers who used to have faith in blockchain games comes and goes, the newer batch has more interest in talking about which DApp (gambling) is worth mining, whether mining is economical, which game pays more dividends, and when will the halving point comes.

Still, people inside or outside this circle all concern about the sustainability of this wave. Everyone who cares about DApps is asking the question “when will the real Decentralized Applications (that have meaningful values) come to us?”

Before that moment, apparently there are a lot of constraints along the road:

Performance of the infrastructure — slow latency on ETH, resources on EOS, etc., Barriers for new users — wallet, public/private keys, transaction fee, getting to know CPU/RAM for EOS High-quality Content — lack of creative and valuable content / intellectual property

Among the three categories, performance may be the least important one for games. My reason is that even if a public chain has very stable high performance, it doesn’t mean there will be fun games / DApps be built on top.

The very core of any game is to be fun, even just be fun at one specific dimension. There are tons of new games in the mobile and PC gaming world, but very few requires the latest hardware or technology. Many fun games could be run on a computer bought 3 years ago.

Even for blockchain games, not every part needs to be on chain — much burden is unnecessary for the infrastructure. Only the core parts, such as assets, security, and other things that need for transparency and fairness, need to be on chain. Infrastructures and applications should really promote each other by improving simultaneously (read this great article by USV — The Myth of The Infrastructure Phase). It really does not make sense to predict an infrastructure that could carry a game with 100MM DAU 5 years later.

The real challenges lie at the second and third constraints above. The high barriers to onboard a non-crypto player and the lack of attractive content really restrict likelihood of acquiring mainstream traditional game players.

Blockchain is only an additional toolkit for games. It is not going to replace or topple the world of the old games. Computer games, had fierce competition since its birth in the 60s and still do. Steam, as a highly profitable distributor, doesn’t even need external capital or access to the public market because its own operation is profitable enough. Even like board games, a category that seems to be very niche, is still a 10bn+ USD market that is expanding fast.

“Blockchain games” is not a new category, but rather we just use it to refer to any game that has blockchain technology involved, because the number of this type of games is simply limited.

Therefore, I don’t really believe that blockchain can break all the rules in the traditional game industry. Sure, blockchain somehow could change the relationship between developers and gamers more reciprocal; it could bring in token-economy to redistribute rewards and modify incentive mechanism; it could also bring real monetary values to the in-game virtual assets. Still, these are only optimization. Blockchain is never going to negate the past of the gaming industry.

At the end of the day, a well-designed blockchain game should just be fun. Players don’t care about whether a game is blockchain-backed, as far as it is fun to play.

Several games will be released in 2019:

Blockchain TCG — Gods Unchained

2. Blockchain TCG — Zombie: Battleground by Loom

2. The first blockchain game by Mythical Games — Blankos

3. A blockchain gaming platform & sandbox game developed by Pixowl — Sandbox

These games are common in a way that they only leverage blockchain as an additional toolbox and a new way to offer a better incentivized ecosystem. I sincerely look forward to their performance next year.

4. Newcomer for DApps: Tron

In addition to EOS, Tron, another public chain, under the leadership of Justin Sun, also attracts quite a few DApps.

Interestingly, while the majority of EOS, a project founded by BM, a guy from the western world, is held by Chinese and Korean people, major holders of Tron, a Chinese project, locate at regions that are non-Asia.

We may just interpret this phenomenon as that local products seem less appetizing than the international ones. The rise of a public chain requires not only users, but also the easiness to making money on top. Tron definitely have both. If someone ever in doubt with the real user activity level of Tron, I would just recommend this person to join the telegram group of TRONbet. The activity of that community is nowhere worse than the top DApps on EOS.

We learned that Tron had been in touch with a lot of DApp developers, both domestically and internationally, and mainstream content provider, just to bring in more diverse content to the ecosystem. The ongoing DApp competition (http://www.tronaccelerator.io/) and the 100MM USD TRX Ecosystem Fund are aggregating popularity.

DappReview does not have a preference on any public chain. We only care about whether a public chain could prove itself with its content and statistics. We are the earliest review institution that starts to trace the DApp activities on Tron. We can’t tell whether Tron will succeed at the end, but from what we observed Tron was delivering concreate results.

5. Stepping into the Dapp world

5.1 Basic understanding and concepts

5.2 Data analytics tools

DappReview website ( https://dapp.review ) — Providing data analytics and Dapp Ranking for 1700+ Dapps runing on ETH/EOS/TRON and will include more public chains going forwards.

Providing data analytics and Dapp Ranking for 1700+ Dapps runing on ETH/EOS/TRON and will include more public chains going forwards. Player Analytics ( https://player.dapp.review ) — You can check out the market movers’ daily activities and spending everyday. Or you can use it as a portfolio management tool to keep track of your own spending on DApps.

5.3 Dapp Wallets

Many people in the crypto world own EOS but not EOS wallet or their own EOS account; their tokens just sit in a centralized exchange. Even investors at many token funds I know do not how to use an EOS wallet.

Below are the some wallets that suppot EOS DApps:

TokenPocket — https://www.mytokenpocket.vip/

— https://www.mytokenpocket.vip/ MeetOne — https://meet.one/

— https://meet.one/ Math Wallet — http://www.mathwallet.org/

— http://www.mathwallet.org/ Bitpie — https://bitpie.com/

— https://bitpie.com/ Secrypto — https://www.secrypto.io/

Worth mentioning is that Bitpie made some bold moves: it tried to create an EOS interoperable stable coin. Whoever owns mainstream crypto assets like BTC, ETH, and USDT, could exchange their assets into same worth of EOS via that stable coin, and subsequently use the assets in EOS DApps or DEX. Essentially such a move is to bring in more users from the mainstream crypto world without worrying about the volatility in EOS price.

Wallets that support DApps on TRON include:

Cobo Wallet — https://cobo.com/

— https://cobo.com/ Math Wallet — http://www.mathwallet.org/

— http://www.mathwallet.org/ GuildChat — https://www.guildchat.io/

5.4 Decentralized Exchange

Forget about the centralized exchanges in the DApp world.

Centralized exchange is similar to the broker dealers in traditional finance. People try to capture alphas through trades on centralized exchanges.

DEX, on the other hand, is more like a foreign exchange service. On a DEX you exchange the mainstream tokens into the DApp tokens, to either game or collateralize for dividends; or, you exchange the DApp tokens back into the mainstream tokens.

Here are some mainstream EOS DEX:

If any questions or any thing wanna discuss, welcome to reach me out @vincent222 on telegram.

About DappReview:

DappReview is the first and largest DApp platform in China, delivering accurate DApp data, user insights and market analytics on blockchains including ETH, EOS, TRON, NAS, etc. As one of the leading media dedicated to blockchain technology and DApps, DappReview provides professional reviews weekly on new DApps and industry insights to the 30k+ followers in social media and crypto communities in China. In the future, we’ll publish more English articles and review on our Medium Channelhttps://medium.com/dappreview

DappReview plays external consultant role for several token funds. And have help three Dapps finish fund-raising as financial advisor.

email: contact@dapp.review

twitter: https://twitter.com/dapp_review

About Nirvana Capital

Nirvana Capital is a San Francisco/Beijing based blockchain fund that focuses on primary market investment and exploration in edging ideas of technology and economics. Its founding partners are also early supporters of Ethereum. To bring together ecosystems that revolutionize the social productions and labor relations with the communities underneath, Nirvana Capital provides end-to-end strong support to its portfolio projects, including advisory on strategies/operations and resources matching.