Monthly decentralized app (dapp) industry overview

Contents

Key takeaways

Introduction

Ethereum: Continues to expand its user base. +163% in Games & Marketplaces

EOS: Daily active wallets decreasing further by 8% in 2020

TRON: Gambling & High-Risk accounts for 83% of the total user base

Conclusions

Key takeaways

Ethereum is off to a great start to 2020 when compared to January 2019 with the growth of its daily active unique wallet count user base up by 82%.

TRON is rising in 2020 with the user base growing 33% when compared to 2019 January.

While the other two blockchains are increasing in 2020 January in comparison to 2019 January, EOS is facing a decrease in daily active users by 61%.

In January 2020 the largest Ethereum category Games & Marketplaces grew by 163% when compared to 2019 January.

The biggest hit of January on Ethereum has been the dapp game Brave Frontier Heroes reaching 1,240 active daily unique wallets.

PoolTogether doubled their user base by the end of January to 283 users.

TRON activity consistently remains heavily concentrated in the Gambling & High-Risk category which accounts for 83% of the total user base.

Newsletter

Introduction

It is important to measure success and take a look at how individual blockchains are performing in the first month of the year. January 2020 data gives an insight into the year ahead: what looks promising, what can we expect from the most popular dapps and what are the changes when comparing the 2019 January and 2020 January data. Moreover, the performances of these blockchains can paint a better picture of what direction the dapp ecosystem is going and what can be expected in 2020.

There are some surprising numbers when measuring the performance of the three blockchains. Daily active unique wallets for Ethereum have increased by 82%, TRON rose by 33%, while EOS was facing a decrease in daily active users by 61% comparing January 2019 data to January 2020.

During January 2020, Ethereum and TRON increased their user bases while EOS had a steady decline.

Ethereum: Continues to expand its user base. Up 163% in Games & Marketplaces

Ethereum has been the most significant smart contract blockchain in terms of the number of active dapps deployed, the depth of its development community, growth in terms of users and, value during 2019.

The beginning of 2020 looks promising as well. In terms of headline figures in January, the daily value in dollars across the Ethereum dapp ecosystem has increased by 39% compared to December 2019 with daily active unique wallets up by 4%.

Comparing the data 2020 January to 2019 January on the Ethereum blockchain, there are significant changes in daily active unique wallets. The percentage change is 82% where the number of average daily active unique wallets was 9,264 at the end of 31st of January 2019, now reaching an average of 16,840 users.

Measuring the volume of tokens interacting with the smart contracts running on Ethereum represents how Ethereum is growing and expanding as a network for creating digital money and financial value.

Ethereum’s daily activity throughout January has been fairly constant, averaging around 16,840 daily active unique wallets. Activity peaked on the 8th of January, reaching 19,506 daily active unique wallets.

Talking about the comparison in categories, daily active unique wallets have three times more users in the Games and Marketplaces category at the end of January of 2020 than it had at the end of January of 2019. In general, users in the mentioned category have changed by 163%.

The most popular dapp categories on Ethereum are Games & Marketplaces, which rose 7%. Thanks in particular to the launch of Brave Frontier Heroes, the category ended the month with 10,467 active unique wallets.

The decentralized application My Crypto Heroes was “The most popular game on Ethereum in 2019”. The game remains top of the chart having an average of 3,660 daily active unique wallets and a retention rate of 75%.

Another game that has launched recently is a crossover of mobile game Brave Frontier and blockchain game My Crypto Heroes. On the first day, Brave Frontier Heroes reached a significant number of 1,240 daily active users which has been increasing ever since. Proof again that having a large and active community can provide a great start. Only time will tell if Brave Frontier Heroes will be as popular as My Crypto Heroes but early signs are very positive.

Across the whole of January, the dapp game Knight Story topped the charts with an average of 669 daily active unique wallets. Despite the fact that the game is in the top 3 on Ethereum, when observing its cross-chain ranking, Knight Story is only #8. The user base of Knight Story is increasing every day, meaning that the dapp is steadily growing and is looking to show great results later this year.

Moreover, another category that everyone is talking about and let’s say one of the “hot” topics in social media these days is DeFi. Average daily active unique wallets have increased by 7% in January. The interesting part is that the user base has increased significantly in the second half of the month, reaching around 1,400 users.

The decentralized applications that had the biggest impact on this rising De-Fi number are MakerDAO with an average of more than 350 daily active unique wallets, Compound with over 240 and PoolTogether with around 100 daily active unique wallets.

Ethereum-based DeFi application PoolTogether which combines interest revenues with lottery system has recently raised $1million in VC funding. It first launched in June 2019, then its creators started working on PoolTogether full-time in August, and launched version 2.0 in September. The dapp has made a sustained improvement during January and it keeps increasing its user base.

EOS: daily active wallets decreasing further by 8% in 2020

2019 was quite a year for EOS. The beginning was positive, however, the ending was downhill all the way. The network congestion caused by the EIDOS airdrop significantly impacted general dapp usage. The result has been a continuous decrease in daily active unique wallets by 8% at the beginning of 2020.

In general, the user base is decreasing in the Gambling & High-Risk category by 29%. The top three dapps that impact this percentage are – Gamblr, Dice, and EOS Royal. For example, decentralized application Gamblr has fallen by over 10,000 daily active unique wallets, Dice has decreased by more than 8,000 users, and EOS Royale by almost 6,800.

On the other hand, the most popular categories on EOS are Exchanges and Games. The top three dapps by daily activity on EOS in January are all in the Game & Marketplace categories.

The three dapps driving this growth are EOS Dynasty, Prospectors, and Crypto Sword & Magic. EOS Dynasty generates an average of 3,751 daily active unique wallets. The dapp is number one not only on the EOS protocol but in cross-chain rankings as well with total daily activity peaking at over 4,000.

Prospectors launched in July 2019 has built up a sustained audience of more than 2,300 daily active unique wallets. Although, the dapp is #2 on EOS, in cross-chain rankings it is number four. Moreover, last year, Prospectors launched on WAX where it sustained around 1,700 daily active unique wallets daily.

Crypto Sword & Magic has an average of 450 daily active unique wallets. The game launched in late June and was one of the more visually appealing and accessible blockchain games.

Furthermore, Crypto Sword & Magic appeared in the top 15 blockchain game companies of the 2020 list.

TRON: Gambling & High Risk accounts for 83% of the total user base

The user base of the TRON dapp ecosystem rose by 8%. In other words, TRON has an impressive number of daily active unique wallets, ending a month with over 22,000 users. Is this a sign that TRON can take the lead in daily active users?

Daily active unique wallets have increased steadily on the TRON protocol, but only in one category – Gambling & High-Risk. As we can see, DAUWs have been decreasing in other categories such as Games & Marketplaces by 7% and Exchanges by 21%. TRON as a maturing dapp ecosystem is still failing to expand outside of gambling and high-risk dapps.

As mentioned before, there was an increase in the user base in the Gambling & High-Risk category and because of that, there is no surprise that the top three decentralized applications on TRON belong to that category as well.

As a matter of fact, TRON’s most popular gambling dapp during January was 888TRON with over 2,600 daily active unique wallets sustained during the whole month. The other two gambling dapps that complete a chart of the top 3 dapps on TRON by users are RocketGame and WINk. Although WINk was the most popular gambling dapp on TRON in 2019, it has now decreased to the third position having an average of 1,405 daily active unique wallets.

There are many other decentralized applications on TRON that don’t belong to the category of Gambling & High-Risk and it appears to be easy to launch well on TRON, but very hard to sustain an audience.

Conclusions

We can conclude by stating that each blockchain has performed differently when looked at from the perspective of its different categories.

Ethereum’s strongest categories are Games and Marketplaces which account for 58% of activity ending January with 10,467 daily active unique wallets, growing by 7% in the first month of 2020.

Comparing the growth of daily active unique wallets in January 2019 and January 2020, the category of Games & Marketplaces in Ethereum has increased by 163%.

Exchanges and De-Fi dapps on Ethereum show real promise with user increases of +9.7% and +7.1% respectively in January 2020.

Ethereum looks set to remain in charge showing a daily dollar value increase of 39% alongside a 4% increase in unique wallets. A great sign for the start of 2020.

Problems for EOS look set to continue in 2020 with daily active unique wallets showing a decrease of 8% in January 2020 and increasing competition from other protocols.

The categories that bring most users to the EOS blockchain are Exchanges and Games.

TRON continues to show steady growth and a sustained user base in the categories of Gambling and High-Risk but still doesn’t appear to be maturing as a blockchain for dapps in other categories.

DappRadar will certainly be keeping a close eye on these blockchains and their performance over the coming months.