In the last 30 days, the number of daily active users of the top 10 Ethereum dapps has surpassed 1 million. Not surprisingly, 6 of the top 10 dapps are from the DeFi & Exchange categories, 2 from High-Risk, one Marketplace, and one from the Gaming category.
1 million, although comparatively small to the numbers thrown around in the mobile app market still marks a significant turning point and provides justification that DeFi may have given Ethereum the killer dapps it needed.
In the last 30 days, the total number of daily active wallets across the top 10 Ethereum dapps at the time of writing is 1,017,760.
The weighting of the categories toward DeFi and Exchange dapps will not come as a surprise to those that follow developments in the sector. In fact, over 94% or 952,920 of the daily active wallets in the last 30 days can be attributed to Defi and Exchange dapps.
3 dapps account for 90% of user activity
Crypto.com, Compound, and Uniswap lead the charge accounting for 90% of the daily active wallets. CRYPTO.COM is pulling out ahead with almost half a million daily active wallets in the last 30 days.
Games and Collectibles on the rise
No doubt, Ethereum, and the blockchain space overall have had an incredible year so far. Innovation ran free and DeFi took the world by storm, Interestingly, two other category dapps appeared within the list of top ten Ethereum dapps. Marketplace dapp Rarible and blockchain game Axie Infinity.
Although adding just 25,000 daily active wallets to the total 1 million. The fact they are in the top 10 list provides insight to further evolution within the space and the forging of two active categories.
Looking more closely at each dapp reveals some exciting characteristics that appear to incorporate DeFi features which have helped to drive increased user activity.
Rarible is an open-source marketplace built on the Ethereum network in early 2020. Users can mint, sell, and create collectibles in the form of non-fungible tokens (NFTs). The platform introduced the $RARI governance token in September 2020 and this fueled user activity. But, fees for listings were quickly introduced as the market became flooded with low-quality art as people clambered to receive free $RARI by becoming an art creator or buyer.
Rarible has experienced a wild fluctuation in both volume and traders. While the number of traders rose by 9% in October compared to September, the trading volume dipped by 29%. The price of $RARI also plunged in October by 70%, currently standing at $1.94, compared to a peak of over $9 in mid-September.
The Axie Infinity game has its own in-house marketplace called Axie Marketplace, where players can find items to buy, sell, auction, and receive offers. Furthermore, in early November 2020, Axie launched its governance token Axie Infinity Shards (AXS).
Axie Infinity has a long-standing appeal to users looking to benefit from the play-to-earn gaming model and these two inclusions just added more depth to that. Through adding a native marketplace the game has successfully retained and increased its users and trading volumes.
Hi-Risk or DeFi?
One other inclusion in the top 10 is the well-publicized High-Risk dapp HEX. Recently we covered the differences between the Hi-Risk and DeFi categories as it could be argued that HEX displays slightly different qualities to most within the High-Risk category.
Firstly, because it has been active for more than 6 months. Usually, High-Risk dapps don’t last more than 3 months. Furthermore, it is not a typical High-Risk dapp structured around hot potato game theory or standard pyramid selling.
Instead, because it integrates its own token with a long period, high return staking mechanic, and strong affiliate marketing. HEX might be better viewed through the perspective of an ambitious attempt to bootstrap a new cryptocurrency and community.
In HEX, users swap their principal in ETH for the HEX token and receive both their principal and interest in HEX. Hence, the High-Risk element of HEX stays within the HEX token price volatility. This means that by the time users receive their principal and interest in HEX tokens. HEX itself might be worthless.
In-summary
User activity is a vital metric to consider when looking at the growth of the Ethereum blockchain.
The forging of separate dapp categories has been a trend of 2020 with DeFi becoming the plumbing layer on which other category dapps reside.
The interest and useability of DeFi features to retail users have become clearer and it can be argued that Ethereum finally has the killer dapps to gives users new and old a tangible way to utilize their tokens.
As always we will continue to monitor developments as they unfold. For now, make sure to bookmark DappRadar and sign up for our newsletter to receive regular updates directly to your inbox.
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