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In the first quarter of this year alone, at least 504 new decentralized apps (dapps) have been listed, and more than half of them are running on Ethereum.
Dapp explorer Dapp.com has issued its latest market report. It aims to present comprehensive data and insight into Ethereum, EOS, STEEM, and TRON, as it says they’ve have managed to attract the most active users in the market.
“It shows that Ethereum is still the [number one] choice for developers to build their dapp on,” reads the report. “[…] The Ethereum-based games have already created a stable community with a group of loyal audience.”
600 inactive Ethereum dapps over the past 3 months
While Ethereum‘s game-players indeed seem to be sticking around, the EOS network is supposedly the most active.
According to Dapp.com‘s data, 95 percent of EOS dapps processed at least one transaction in the first quarter of this year; dapps running on Steem and TRON recorded slightly lower activity, with 80 percent of them processing at least one transaction in the same period.
Though really, gambling apps still make up the lion’s share of volume on the EOS network.
“On the other hand, although beating other chains in terms of dapp amount, nearly 600 Ethereum dapps were in “inactive” status without a single transaction record over the past three months,” declared Dapp.com
The report also found the EOS landscape was (finally) evolving. Dapp.com noted gambling dapps accounted for a striking 99 percent of its total volume last year, but new games and financial services had since joined the network.
Though really, gambling apps still make up the lion’s share of volume on the EOS network.
TRON supposedly the ‘fastest growing’ ecosystem in 2019
Overall, Dapp.com named TRON as the fastest growing dapp ecosystem in 2019, with both the number of TRON mainnet wallets and new users increasing the fastest of the four chains analyzed.
This has supposedly led its total transaction volume to surpass $91 million on March 15, which is meant to have broken the highest records set by Ethereum and EOS dapps so far.
“TRON dapps had more than 300,000 active users, followed by EOS dapps with around 260,000 active users,” reads the report. However, it appears these figures conflate “accounts” with “users,” which could be misleading. Indeed, a single user can have multiple accounts on these networks.
“By the end of Q1 2019, the number of the wallets created on TRON mainnet has exceeded $2.3 million, among them, 15.46 percent were dapp users, raised nearly 1.5 fold since the beginning of 2019.”
‘User’ growth is still mainly driven by cryptocurrency gambling
It should be said that many have speculated that statistics of this nature are easily faked. “Actions” on Delegated Proof-of-Stake blockchains like TRON and EOS are effectively free, which renders networks prone to spam.
It should also be noted there is no reason one person cannot create multiple accounts on these networks, so in that sense, the number of “accounts” should not be considered equal to the number of individual users.
Ultimately, the data confirmed blockchain’s uncomfortable truth – “user” growth is still mainly driven by gambling, with reports suggesting nearly 350,000 accounts engaged in gambling activities on these networks.
To compare, games and exchanges both were said to have attracted around 90,000 users over the same timeframe.
Still, until the industry enforces proper metrics for “transaction quality,” it’s necessary to view stats like these with healthy skepticism. At least for now, this is all we’ve got.
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Published April 10, 2019 — 16:34 UTC