The “smart contract platform” space is crowded by a host of heavy hitters. So, how do we know which platform is going to win this war? How can we ensure that FLETA wins the adoption game?
Lessons learned from Cryptokitties
Cryptokitties came out towards the end of 2017 and it completely blew up in popularity. In fact, cryptokitties was so popular that at one point, it was the third most gas hungry smart contract in Ethereum. That was when all the issues started coming up. Ethereum’s blockchain was simply not ready and scalable enough to handle the load. As such, their system got clogged up. The number of pending transactions increased exponentially:
The entire cryptokitties episode taught us two very important lessons:
- People are willing to invest their time and money in a Dapp if they find it fascinating enough.
- The blockchains should be ready to handle this increase in load.
Now, consider this.
Cryptokitties is just a simple gaming Dapp. It wasn’t bringing something revolutionary into space. It is a simple recreational Dapp which allowed users to grow and breed their own kitties.
Maybe this is exactly how we can win the adoption game?
Let’s check out the top three Dapps on Ethereum, EOS, and Tron.
Top thee Dapps on Ethereum, EOS, and Tron
Since mainstream adoption is all about Dapps which can attract the most users, we will rank the Dapps according to the number of users they have managed to attract in the last 24 hours.
Ethereum
- My Crypto Heroes: 1.9k users
- Playtowin.io: 1k users
- IDEX: 974 users
My Crypto Heroes is a simple RPG game while Playtowin is a gambling game DApp. IDEX is an exchange and the only Dapp on the top 3 which doesn’t qualify as a “recreational Dapp.”
EOS
- PRA CandyBox: 8.2k users
- ENBank: 6.4k users
- EOS Knights: 6.2k users
Of these three, EOS Knights is a gaming Dapp.
Tron
- TronVegas: 3.3k users
- TRONbet: 3.2k users
- p3t.network: 2.9k users
Both TronVegas and TRONbet are gambling game Dapps.
So, of the 9 total Dapps above, 5 were gaming Dapps. These 5 Dapps pulled 15.6k users in total!
The relationship between gaming and crypto is not a new one by any stretch of the imagination. Noted crypto evangelist, Brock Pierce believes that gamers and the ever-growing gaming industry will be a major driver in crypto adoption through 2019. He said: “The earliest adopters at the scale of crypto were gamers. That’s why Korea and China are so big. These were the markets where people played video games and bought and sold virtual currency for games like Second Life and World of Warcraft.”
Will Recreational Dapps be enough?
Of course, it will be foolhardy to think that one killer gaming Dapp is all that is needed to win the “war of the platforms.” We need to continue high-level innovation and make sure that we are always ahead when it comes to overall performance. However, one killer Dapp may be just about enough to get over more people on board.
Think of how smartphones became popular.
Smartphones became insanely popular because of all the applications that it offered, mainly WhatsApp. WhatsApp allowed people to send messages, photos, videos etc. for free. As more and more people started using it, their friends and family didn’t want to be left out. Obviously, they couldn’t use WhatsApp on their old phones, so they bought smartphones to get in on the action.
Think about it. The messaging space was already overcrowded with SMS, social media, emails, BBM, etc. However, people just had to be on WhatsApp, and for that reason, they were ok with buying a new smartphone.
This is the single biggest reason why a good value recreational Dapp goes a long way towards adoption. Let’s take a recent example. Between March 3–9, Tron completely dominated this space. Here are some of the numbers from that week:
- Tron DApps experienced a 207% rise in weekly transaction volume with a total volume of $180 million which far exceeded that of EOS ($102 million) and Ethereum ($24 million).
- They acquired 33,000 new users, triggering a 64% growth.
Do you know what were the three most popular Dapps which pulled in the most users that week? Epic Dragons, CrazyDogs, and TronGo. All three of them are recreational (gaming and gambling) Dapps.
