It looks like the market is continuing to mature.
With the exception of Ethereum, almost all the blockchain initiatives made solely to facilitate the development of “dapps” are gradually slipping in their market valuations and in their rankings in the top 100 coins.
Is it any surprise?
2017 and 2018 saw the meteoric rise of multiple ICOs and various "glam projects" promising to deliver the “decentralized internet” to the masses based on nothing but the ideas in their white papers.
All those promises have come home to roost this year and will continue to do so on into 2020 and beyond. The lack of developmental progress and the inability to garner a community of real users are, and will continue to crush, the market value and feasibility of a lot of these projects.
Arguably, the two oldest dapp chains in the space are Ethereum and Neo.
Ethereum has been promising to come through on Proof-of-Stake and a multitude of other blockchain upgrades since its inception, but it has failed to deliver on almost all of them. Their ability to rally a large user base early on and their “first-mover” status has allowed them to maintain the number two spot in the total market, but their failure to deliver the necessary protocol upgrades is hurting their market valuation and causing stress fractures to occur in the usability of their blockchain (a.k.a. unrelentingly high gas fees and weak user-interface experiences).
Neo’s dropping market value and rank slippage is the story of a what happens when a dapp chain fails to upgrade and has a small user base with a lackluster list of dapps. Unless Neo 3.0 comes through soon and we see a massive resurgence of users come back to the network, we will be scrolling down to the bottom of the page to find it, along with a host of other dapp chains that have fallen from grace like Aeternity, Ardor, Elastos and (dare I say it?) Steem.
With a little over 20% of the top 100 coins being dapp chains on any given day, we have truly reached the commoditization level of dapp chains, especially in a community that’s as small as the global crypto community.
We are in the “consolidation phase” now and the only dapp chains that will survive will be those that are 1) willing to upgrade their tech, 2) spend money on marketing and PR teams and 3) grow a large community of active users that can get people from the outside interested.
Currently, there are only two (maybe three) major dapp chains that are doing all of these things the right way, but more will join these from the ranks of the flailing and the fallen if they learn that they must execute properly on these three things to in order to shape up the viability of their networks and survive.
Invest wisely my friends,
Coffee w/ Crypto
