Decrypting Crypto, from Bitcoin and Blockchain to ICOs (2017) [video] | Hacker News Reader

Decrypting Crypto, from Bitcoin and Blockchain to ICOs (2017) [video]

a16z.com

39 pointssdeepak14 comments

What are the most adopted blockchain apps for consumers? The only one I can think of is BAT/Brave with 5 million MAU.

Sort of depends on what you consider a consumer app. CryptoKitties and Loom Networks' ZombieBattleground and DelegateCall have some decent numbers. Then of course there is wallet software that interfaces with blockchain (e.g. Metamask), which could ask if consider a blockchain app or not.

What do you consider decent numbers?

Your examples don't inspire a ton of confidence. It's publicly known that Cryptokitties' usage numbers fell off a cliff.[0] I've never heard of Zombie Battleground or DelegateCall before but after doing a bit of research it looks like one is a CCG and the other is a Q&A site. Neither of those products need the blockchain to function and both are going into exceptionally competitive markets against deep pocketed, competent competitors. (Artifact, Hearthstone, MTG Arena, Gwent, Quora, Stack Overflow, Yahoo Answers - ok maybe not Yahoo)

I don't think there's any evidence to support the claim that such an application exists currently. I know Brave uses BAT, but that's not really their selling point if you are to believe their own marketing.[1]

I think you'd have to be a fanatic to think that there are rosier times ahead.

[0]: https://dappradar.com/app/3/cryptokitties [1]: https://brave.com/

The whole point of BAT in Brave is that it is seemless. The donations will happen automatically. What's your point?

According to https://dappradar.com/ , CryptoKitties has only had 351 active users over the past 24 hours, which is tiny considering it is the 8th most popular dapp globally. It used to have a lot more users, in fact the users and volume comparison over time looks a little like the internet adoption curve but in reverse. Most of the dapps with higher usage are exchanges so not sure they would count as "apps for consumers". I'm sure I'm not alone in being disappointed with the way it has turned out - we were promised a "world computer" with globally distributed apps, and all we got was a lousy platform for launching s4itcoins.

Only a fraction of Brave users use BAT though, so not sure it should be counted as a blockchain app. You don't need BAT to use Brave, the browser.

Yes. It's early days but I'm curious as to what can be sticky. I don't think anyone has it all figured out yet.

Out of the so-called popular DApps listed on Coinbase Wallet, I only personally use Cent (beta.cent.co), but its user base is still quite small. Adoption has barely begun.

I would count any contract on the blockchain as a Dapp, so the most widely adopted would be ERC20 contracts, which are currently executing about 160,000 transactions per day.

We are talking 1) MAU and 2) your average consumer in this thread.

I would argue that Maker is the most successful project on Ethereum at the moment. It's hardly categorized as a dApp because most people interact only with the DAI stablecoin token and not with an interface. Is already released on mainnet, has a solid roadmap and has no scalability problems.

https://makerdao.com

Hey everyone! I'm going to print a whole bunch of money. It's going to be so awesome. Here you can have some! It's going to be so awesome! You just need to help me convince other people that it's valuable...

[Plug alert] Gifting is one of the few practical use cases for transacting in crypto today. We just launched https://Biterica.com: Gift Bitcoin forward and we're getting some positive feedback on /r/Bitcoin. Would love to hear feedback (good and bad) from HN as well.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com