State of Consumer Crypto
What is Consumer Crypto? What is its current state? What's to look forward?
Explaining to the non-crypto crowd that crypto isn’t just a financial playground but a wild world of endless possibilities, especially in the consumer sphere, can feel like trying to convince a fish it can fly! 🌊✨🚀
NFTs and smart contracts have already shaken up traditional finance with their cool, innovative uses. Now, this tech is still wide open, offering developers a chance to revolutionize all sorts of consumer industries—think content, social media, and gaming.
The future's all about open, permissionless systems and smart contracts that make development super transparent. Users will get to own digital assets like NFTs, which will be key for creating and managing digital relationships, identities, and self-custody.
Consumer Crypto will likely be the primary market that has the potential to attract users to crypto. The industry would evolve where most applications will have their users engage on its platform including on-chain actions and own NFTs, regardless of users’ awareness.
In this article, we’re plunging into the thrilling realm of consumer crypto apps! We’ll uncover why it’s the perfect moment to launch those mind-blowing apps, and take a deep dive into the tech magic making it all happen. 🚀💡
Why Now is a Great Time to Build?
Before answering the question, let’s understand: WHY consumer needs smart contracts and NFT technology?
At the onset of new technology, people often replicate the older existing systems. However, this new technology enables new actions, applications, and business models that weren’t possible earlier or hadn’t imagined in that context.
What consumer activities were impossible or not experimented before the advent of smart contracts and NFTs?
Collecting content is a new business model for other types of media outside art like podcasts, articles, music, videos etc.
Digital art couldn’t be owned, or bought or sold before NFTs.
A social media platform which is permissionless for social apps to build on top of and monetize via collecting content or other activities.
A permissionless gaming platform for gaming apps to build on top and monetize via open economies of gaming item collectibles which could be interoperable.
NFTs can evolve beyond digital art by being interactive and dynamic through NFT wallets, interacting with applications through infrastrucutre stacks like ERC6551 or Tokenbound Accounts on Ethereum or with Token Extensions on Solana.
One of the coolest things about crypto networks is how they mix up apps and infrastructure because they’re so open and interoperable. In the traditional tech world, companies like Amazon or Facebook had to decide to open up their APIs and become platforms. But with crypto apps, they’re usually open and ready to work with other systems from the start, letting them grow into the kind of infrastructure that others can build on.
Examples like CryptoKitties or even a smart contract — can quickly transform into foundational infrastructure if developers leverage it as a base for new projects. This creates a continuous cycle where apps evolve into infrastructure and new apps emerge from that very infrastructure, accelerating innovation.
The app-to-infrastructure cycle in crypto is more fluid and dynamic compared to traditional tech ecosystems. It enables more vibrant and interconnected ecosystem.
The industry is already equipped with layer 1 blockchains like Ethereum which focuses on security, trust-less operations and solving scalability, higher gas fees with layer 2 solutions. The other side, Solana blockchain has been driving growth with its high throughput and low transaction costs, providing an alternative for developers to build scalable apps. We have other layer 1s like Binance’s BNB, Sui and Avalanche.
While the layer 2 solutions like Optimistic Rollups (Optimism, Arbitrum) and ZK-Rollups (Starknet, zKSync, PolygonzkEVM etc) solve the scalability challenge by aggregating transactions off-chain, reducing the load on main blockchain while still leveraging its security.
Since we are discussing about contracts, let’s also have a look at Ethereum.
Ethereum has Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) that executed smart contracts on Ethereum network. Solidity is the primary programming language used to write EVM-compatible smart contracts. Other blockchains that are compatible with the Ethereum protocol, including but not limited to Binance Smart Chain, Polygon, and Avalanche and Fantom.
Non-EVMs like Solana use different execution environments which require different programming languages like Rust.
The industry has solutions for data storage options like Arweave, IPFS offering storage features off-chain for metadata and permanent storage solutions to preserve data on-chain.
When it comes to data indexing and retrieving between applications, we have entities like Solana FM, The Graph, Zeta Block, decentralized protocols that indexes blockchain data and allows applications to query, thereby enabling faster and more efficient data retrieval.
The blockchains sure lack knowledge outside smart contracts. To bridge this gap, we have oracles services like Chainlink, Pyth, Midpoint which connects smart contracts to real-world data, allowing for dynamic and data-driven applications.
For users to onboard we have interactive and simple interface wallets that power crypto applications like Phantom, Metamask, Backpack which allows users to manage assets, sign transactions, bridge assets and interact with applications. Most of these applications have turned mobile-friendly enabling seamless onboarding to users. On top of this, services like Magic.Link or WalletConnect further simplifying the onboarding process for new users, reducing friction of wallet connection and usage.
To move from one blockchain to another, we have Bridges like Wormhole or Allbridge, or Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol by Circle allowing users to seamlessly move their assets from one blockchain to another while offering security and higher throughput at low-cost at the same time.
With regards to marketplaces for NFTs, we have applications like OpenSea on Ethereum and Metaplex, Magic Eden on Solana which leverages the blockchain technology and offers discovery marketplaces for NFTs enabling users to not just mint, but trade and sell their NFTs.
Recently in the first half of 2024, Solana introduced Actions and Blinks which have the potential for crypto to enter the feeds of new users or non-crypto folks. Think of those like a micro-app that connects you to your wallet to do a specific task. It solves the need for the user to interact with crypto applications.
Blinks can be posted on platforms like X (previously Twitter), which onboards users on-chain. Blinks are a front-end client (UI) for Actions. It can be used for minting an NFT anywhere, long or short any SPL tokens (ex- Bonk), vote in DAO governance, donate to creators or any other transaction that could be possible. Blinks are paving their way beyond Solana to EVM which will further open opportunities for users to engage and interact between applications across ecosystems.
Putting it all together, when a user interacts with applications, they typically start at the front-end layer, which interfaces with smart contracts deployed on Layer 1s and 2s. These smart contracts are powered by the blockchain execution layer, with data often stored in decentralized storage solutions like IPFS, Arweave. Services like Middleware and APIs ensure that data flows between these layers, while securing protocols and governance frameworks. Interoperability solutions allow applications to interact with other blockchains, creating seamless user experience across different networks.
Now that we’ve covered the basics of the infrastructure, let’s dive into the protocols that let developers build cool stuff on top of it. We’ll check out the top protocols across different blockchains and see how these apps first caught the eye of their users!!
Ethereum and EVM chains
Lens Protocol
Lens is an open social network which allows users to own content and make connections. It allows developers to build applications on top of Lens network where the apps can leverage audience and infrastructure. It was launched in February 2022 by the team behind Aave, Lens introduced a paradigm deeply rooted in the on-chain ethos of the DeFi world.
Users using Lens can switch between apps without loosing their profile, content or connections. This protocol was one of the earliest social protocols in social graphs that enabled developers to build on top of it. One of the most notable features of its design is its capacity to embed on-chain logic within social media posts, allowing the collection of a creator’s post exclusively by users possessing specific NFTs.
Lens protocol remains permission-based, providing invite only approach for users to create their profiles and engage within the network.
Lens is built on top of Polygon network initially, but recently moved to zKSyncs’ ZK Stack hyperchains. Lens network handles simultaneous instant transactions while ensuring data security. Since the beginning, Lens thrives to provide users a web2 like experience by leveraging Account Abstraction with embedded wallet support. This enabled users to make gasless and signless transactions on the network.
Let’s discuss about architecture — the protocol uses Validiums and Volitions. The protocol believes that validium scaling solutions is great for social networks as it is offers lower costs and higher DAUs. Validium separates security and data availability in combination with ZK compression techniques, where the social transactions are secured for data integrity.
On the other hand, Volitions are used to combine a ZK-rollup and validium chain and allows users to switch between two scaling solutions. With Volitions, users can leverage the off-chain data availability for certain transactions, while retaining the freedom to switch to an on-chain data availability solution if needed.
⚡⚡ The development of above diagram is structured into three phases to achieve scalability and enhance user control over social and financial transactions.
Phase 1 focuses on building the foundational infrastructure using Validium to ensure users’ social activities are verifiable, supporting a variety of use cases, including private interactions like emails and public ones’ like posts. In this phase, private interactions leverage Validium for data availability (DA) with provable CRUD access controls at the node level based on cryptography.
In phase 2, the network advances itself by creating distinct and synchronized public and private Validium chains to various social network use cases, with public transactions secured by a DA provider and private transactions secured within a self-managed system. These transactions are verified on Ethereum without exposing underlying data.
Finally phase 3 enhances security and user control by integrating ZK rollups and Validium, allowing users to secure financial transactions on Ethereum while managing social transactions on Validium with separate DA locations. This phase introduces advanced verification methods using ZK proofs, ensuring privacy without revealing additional data.
The network is looking to build next generation protocol through a ‘Cross-Chain Hub.’ The idea is to serve as a central social networking hub for entire Lens user base. This newer version will not only be functioning as a shared social network but also as a cross-chain protocol, with its main hub hosted on the Lens Network using zkSync. It will also support deployment on other EVM and non-EVM networks.
The Lens protocol have touched creating more than 400k profiles on its protocol. The below charts represents the creation of profiles peaking in March 2024. The reason could be emergence of $Bonsai, a key meme token within the Lens ecosystem, introduced by the MadFi team.
It became a hit with developers and creators because it boosts user engagement and helps with monetization. By letting followers collect posts through $Bonsai, creators have seen a nice bump in their earnings, which has had a positive effect on the whole ecosystem!!
Ecosystem
Let’s look at the ecosystem and explore on the functionalities and features of each application.
Orb gives the vibe of Twitter that’s blended with Instagram, focusing on both textual and visual content which makes it versatile platform for users. Orb has the feature which allows users to create clubs around the topics they’re most interested in, similar to Farcaster’s channels (coming on this soon).
Hey.xyz, which was originally known as Lenster is the project rebranded to Hey and launched its new website in September 2023. It’s one of the oldest clients built on top of Lens protocol. It leverages features of Lens protocol, like collecting, minting, and tipping posts directly in the Hey feed. It also launched 3 creator licenses natively for collectible content which lets creators choose various ways to fully own things they post on platform.
Phaver, like Orb clubs, has its own set of communities that can be token-gated. The platform promotes user engagement through a points system that rewards interactions within the app. Recently, Phaver introduced new onboarding tasks, allowing users to earn points as they explore the platform’s features. Phaver is testing a third-party facial recognition tool, Anima, to enhance sybil resistance and combat bots on the platform.
Teaparty is a Social & Earn protocol, where everyone can socialize and earn revenue together. The platform empowers creators, writers, musicians and others to get their content discovered.
There is a network that rewards for good opinions, called Yup. It create a social consensus layer for the internet, accurately representing the social value of anything from random tweets to NFTs. Yup is a decentralized, semi-autonomous social consensus protocol.
Share is another interesting project, where it lets authors publish books, articles, and other written content as NFTs and readers can interact with their favourite authors. Users can follow favourite authors, explore trending writings and bookmark them for later use.
LensTube (renamed as Tape), is a video-sharing platform which aims to be Web3 YouTube built on top of Livepeer and Lens Protocol. This platform lets users create profile using Lens protocol and leverage their social graph to create and share videos with their followers. The videos are stored in IPFS and Livepeer for serving the users in a decentralized manner.
0xPPL, is a crypto-native social network founded by Prasanna Sankar, backed by Balaji Srinivasan, AllianceDAO and Anagramxyz. This is a unique platform building social graphs around your friends on what they are doing with their crypto wallets, bridging the gap between anonymous web and social networks.
Get ready to keep an eye on this platform—it's got the vision and leadership to totally shake up the social graph game! 🚀
Firefly is another social application for exploring the world of web3, AI, NFTs. It looks similar to X but interoperable with Farcaster, Lens, Mirror, Gitcoin, Shapshot protocols. I didn’t see uniqueness compared to Lens protocol or with Orb with Firefly but offers mobile-friendly experience to its users. Similar to this, there is Lenspeer which is focused on developing All-in-One decentralized social media platform on Lens protocol.
The ecosystem has other applications like Dumpling for video streaming, Orna for users to explore, find and sell NFTs. There are other apps like Buttrfly which is a social explorer and lets users connect with friends via Lens and Farcaster.
Kaira, is a decentralized social media application that empowers creators and consumers to be part of a comprehensive and sustainable token economy model to monetize their content without any subscription or ad-based revenue models. $KIARA token rewards active contributors on the platform with their posts and engagement. This application is hosted on Polygon and powered by Lens Protocol.
Creators can post content, if gets engagement on their content, they receive $KAIRA. On the other side, consumers can stake their $KAIRA, engage with content and earn from staked $KAIRA. The token hasn’t yet released for analyse the tokenomics.
Farcaster
Farcaster is an open source and permissionless network which allows third-party developers to build on top of it. Similar to Lens, user data isn’t owned and stored. Instead, user data is available in a open social graph allowing developers to build applications instead of creating new userbase.
Farcaster had become widely popular on Twitter lately due to its introduction of Frames.
Farcaster is a base protocol on which users post ‘casts’ (similar to tweets). Users own their handles (via private keys) and social graphs that comes with them. It has a growing ecosystem of applications built for wide range of use cases for its users.
Let’s look at its architecture to understand its uniqueness in the ecosystem.
Farcaster started with Ethereum base protocol, and moved on to Optimism, a layer 2 solution to achieve scalability. Looking at the above illustration, I see Farcaster has an interesting structure. Its architecture balances security and performance by using both on-chain and off-chain systems.
On-chain actions/contracts are executed on Optimism network. Some of these actions include creating an account, paying rent to store data and adding account keys for connecting to other apps. These actions are minimized to keep costs low and performance high.
Whereas, actions like posting messages, following others, and updating profile pictures, reacting to posts happens off-chain within p2p network called Hubs. Think of these Hubs as a software in the form of a node/distributed network that stores and validates the Farcaster data. Each Hub stores a copy of all Farcaster data which can be later accessed over an API. It’s simple functioning is to validated the data, store the data and replicate it. Check out their technical details of the architecture here.
So, what are the interesting applications built on top of this architecture??
Paragraph is a publishing platform for creators to permissionless-ly distribute content to its audience. The team believes creator should own their own content and audience and allow developers to build on top of it. Paragraph made their first move on Farcaster, which enables interoperability for content.
When a Paragraph post URL is shared on Farcaster, the comments and associated discussions are permissionless-ly displayed on the post itself. This enables authors, writers and readers leverage the interoperability between social apps to get a holistic view of all discussions happening over the content.
Icebreaker is an open professional network which lets you meet exceptional people. When I checked out first, I got the vibe of LinkedIn for Web3. But I was wrong! It positions itself as privacy-preserving professional network. The team promotes it as a trust network using credential-based systems that allows you to traverse networks and own the networks. The company developed systems to verify information and solve the existing fragmented professional data. Check out the video where the founders talked about it.
The team had recently announced $5M Seed fund led by Coin Fund to build a tool that offers trust, identity and interoperability directly to professionals.
Bountycaster is an interesting platform which enables Farcaster users to create bounties for tasks. Any Farcaster user can pick up the bounty and get paid once the work gets completed.
Unlonely is a live-stream platform with gamified features including on-chain betting, and their own $Vibes token. The team built this to make internet a less lonely place by improving the passive and isolating experience of algorithm generated content. It is built on top of Base (Layer 2 on Ethereum) backed by Multicoin, Coinbase Ventures BEF and others.
Streamers can setup bets on their channel during livestream and validate the result on the smart contract. Users can bet via voting system and win back funds depending on the betting pool. The team has integrated Farcaster and Lens directly in the stream chat thereby opening a profound of experience for their users beyond Unlonely.
This may be included under consumer space, but Launchcaster can be touch some folks in the consumer base. It is a kind of ProductHunt where anyone can find projects that were being built or recently launched and their updates. It is a community driven space which allows entreprenues to showcase their products/services and get feedback from folks who want to try out new products. This effects to create buzz around their projects.
Perl, a gaming application, where users hunt for pearls and get rewarded. It is a skill-based prediction game and it’s very simple. Consumers should choose whether a caster will have More or Less Casts tomorrow. This is a SocialFi gaming platform which engages users to participate and win.
Finally Warpcast, the largest application on Farcaster led by Dan Romero and Varun Srinivasan (Former Coinbase employees). This is the first client for Farcaster, which also leverages Farcaster ID (Warpcast accounts) and store the content in Farcaster hubs.
The on-boarding is simple. Pay $5 annually and create an account. Check out the below video of its mobile interface:
At first glance, you might see it like X (Twitter). People send casts (tweets) and share information pretty much about anything. The UI looks native like X, you can follow and be followed by people you discover on the network. Nothing’s interesting right?
But when Frames, a developer tool, came into the picture, Warpcast became more useful application beyond X and developers can build multiple applications using Frames on Farcaster. Think of Frames as interactive buttons within your newsfeed that lets you use different applications without leaving the platform. The button allows on-chain interactions in the backend without having the user to go elsewhere.
The above graph explains that there has been explosion of users post the introduction of Frames on Farcaster. The total addresses that have interacted with a Farcaster Frame touched beyond 40k and total Farcaster Frame transactions crossed 160k. When it comes to volumes, total Frames volumes crossed $50k.
The total Frames Casted is going to touch 200k with unique Frame Caster standing around 26k. The below chart shows the number of times frames have been casted over the protocol.
Apart from this, Warpcast has ‘Warps’ as an in-app currency that can give users access to perks and privileges. Just to clarify, don’t treat Warps as on-chain tokens. It is administered by the Warpcast team.
How does Warps work? Users can earn Warps through Warps reward program for being the most active users on the application and for sharing casts that receive certain threshold of engagement. Warps are also used to reward for nodes running Hubs who are contributing to run the decentralized network. Warps can also be bought via crypto tokens.
It has a Channel feature, which gives the vibe of Subreddits but on X. It allows users to create channels who meet minimum threshold activity on Farcaster by paying 10k Warps.
The ecosystem offers other applications like Farcard, a unique NFT collections that include users Farcaster stats. These NFTs are fun, viral, and are playing an essential role in engaging audiences/consumers of the platform. There is other application called Flink which automatically links all of your digital identities across Farcaster, Twitter, Ethereum, and more. This further enhances the user experience in engaging with their existing network and expanding it further across platforms.
Friend.tech, a decentralized social token-driven application built on Base allowing creators to monetize their content. The concept of this platform is very interesting as it allows creators to connect their online community (ex- Twitter/Instagram/Substack) through tokenized attention, where the influence is represented by ‘Keys” (shares). These shares gives users’ access to exclusive private chats, and other perks associated between creator and follower. Friend.tech is a perfect example of social capital but on-chain which opens up doors for creators to derive value from social networks, relationships and participation.
However, with this idea, for creators earning substantial income can be a potential challenge without a sizable social following due to platform’s design which monetizes influence. Also, the community raised their voices on the security concerns as the wallet keys reside on Friend.tech’s server, which make their wallets custodial.
Fantasy.top is a SocialFi Trading Card Game on Blast network (Layer 2 on Ethereum), gamifying the activities of popular influencers on X by turning them into NFT cards. The platform had experienced 15,000 new users on the launch date. The platform is similar to Fantasy Sports tournaments but with social media personalities.
Influencers on this platform are known as ‘Heroes’. Heroes NFTs are ranked according to their social performance and status, although the rarity ranking of cards is present. The performance of ‘Heroes’ is based on the engagement and total impression of their posts on X within a particular period. The more impression tweets from Heroes’ on a player’s deck make, the more points they acquire and adjustments made in the leaderboard.
Fantasy Top grew at a faster pace in the first half of 2024 and the below data represents that the decline of volumes on the platform.
On the other spectrum, Polymarket is one of the largest prediction markets platform allowing users to place bets on world events. Users buy and sell shares using cryptocurrency to bet on the likelihood of future events taking place. The platform is built on Polygon blockchain.
Polymarket has been doing insane volumes in the recent quarters and expected to grow due to global events happening in 2024 like US Elections, War etc.
Solana (SVM)
The world of Solana looks completely different from Ethereum. It doesn’t have any protocols but applications built directly on top of Solana. In past, there were teams like Gum , Solarplex, Wordcel Club which have tried to build but few of these had to shut down.
The Solana recently introduced ZK Compression (check out my recent article on ZK Rollups on Ethereum vs ZK Compression on Solana), Token Extensions, SVM API and Firedancer which opened up opportunities for developers to build wide range of applications.
With ZK Compression, developers can store any data at a fraction of cost. This cost beats the industry wide standards.
SVM API allows developers to create a layer on top of Solana, which provides more flexibility to the protocol builders to include custom-use cases and also make it cheaper.
With the announcement of Blink, the frontend of the crypto can use existing platforms like X, Reddit, Facebook etc, along with a website for complex tasks which enabling to be embed itself in social and viral content.
So, what are the consumer application being built on Solana?
Drip Haus is a creator platform, allowing creators to distribute digital art (ex- art, audio, video, articles etc) to their followers and receive payments and tips via platform-native tokens called Droplets. I personally use the platform for collecting free NFTs. The platform demands engagement for any user to collect NFTs which leads to higher daily active users. The only aspect Drip should focus is on Creators and the wide range (in different forms) of content being distributed on its platform.
The platform has peaked with 160k daily active wallets earlier in 2024, However, the platform faced challenges with heavy congestion on the Solana blockchain. On top of it, it has mobile application easing the onboarding process.
Pump.fun, is a marketplace that allows users to easily create and distribute their own tokens, where the majority are memecoins without an intrinsic value proposition. Pump.fun is a SocialFi platform, where traders can capitalize on sudden price surges in crypto. The beauty of this app is the platform charges just 0.02SOL (around $3), which enables anyone to launch their own tokens and build utilities on top of it.
Creators, celebrities and other well known folks have used this application. As the coins in the marketplace skyrocket in value within minutes, folks use Telegram called Trojan on Solana to capitalize on speed and profits. On a side note, I am fascinated by the growth of Pump fun but I may not be a fan of their user interface. Hope they work on it to better their UI for its users.
The total transactions deployed 1.8M on Pump.Fun with total revenue crossing 630k SOL. Pump is shaping the crypto social, far beyond being Twitter clone, and the future of Pump looks fascinating if it starts experimenting with social graphs.
Helium, is a DePin (decentralized physical infrastructure networking) positioned in building decentralized wireless network. In simple terms, it is a mobile service that offers $20-a-month 5G connectivity over its community-powered Helium Mobile network. Helium is one of the applications which has physical/real hardware.
Anyone can set up a hotspot in their home and act like a mini cell phone tower. People nearby can use this network, and the hotspot owners are rewarded with Helium’s native token for providing the service.
Similar to Helium, there is Dabba Network focusing on Indian region to democratize internet connectivity.
Hivemapper, a mapping network, is another application that aims to compete with Google Maps API with a democratized, user-generated world map created with individual dashcams and leveraging Helium network to verify the location of each driver.
The Hivemapper provides free dashcam allowing users to play AI Trainer games to improve the mapmaking process, provide feedback via phone like road closures and
3.Land, is a low fee cNFT launchpad leveraging Blink mints easing the minting experience for users on Solana. It offers a marketplace and social space for NFTs to built future metaverse.
Dialect is an interesting application, a sticker focused messaging platform for creators and fans. A social messaging application which lets people share their personality with their friends by letting them mint and share stickers directly within the messaging platform. Hundreds of artists had signed up, including Trev EI, Claynosaurz, Hublinxx, Joyce Liu and others.
The application uses compressed NFTs, to reduce the minting costs and enable the scalability of sharing of NFTs.
Access Protocol is a monetization layer for creators, products or anyone who are seeking to explore a subscription based model for their fans or users. It introduces a new model where users stake ACS tokens instead of traditional direct subscriptions. This approach not just solves the heavy fees problem but also aligns their interests with the platform.
The protocol enables users to lock $ACS tokens to a creator pool, granting them access to the creator’s content until they choose to unlock. Both the user and the pool owner (creator) beings to earn rewards, which are divided equally between them. There is a 2% fee when a user locks their ACS into a pool which was put to avoid spam resistance. This ensures users don’t go into a pool to download a creators content and leave immediately, and do the same with other pools.
I would like to include TipLink into this picture, which creates frictionless wallet with just a Google Account. This lets users to send digital assets at scale to even non-crypto folks just with a simple click.
Primitives is building decentralized social network which allows users to transfer their social connections across different application and even other blockchains. It utilizes advancements in storage efficiency which reduces the cost associated with fully on-chain digital identity and social graphs.
The protocol is designed to store and manage relationships between wallets, NFTs, and other assets on the blockchain, making them more secure and durable. The difference is social graphs (which show connections between users and assets) were stored off-chain by companies. That means, if the company goes out of business, the data could be lost. The Primitive address this by storing these relationships in Merkle trees on the blockchain, thereby enabling the transfer of social connections across different applications and blockchains, making decentralized social networks a reality. Check out its whitepaper for more technical details.
While coming to prediction markets on Solana, Monaco Protocol, offers a decentralized betting engine that offers global liquidity on predication markets. This plays as a key infrastructure to build prediction-book applications for developers to build applications like Polymarket. The protocol boasts with total bets with $11M+
Developers have already started building applications. Some of the upcoming projects like Parier (an equity prediction platform that allows betting on the outcome of asset prices during non-trading hours), Tinbet (allowing users to bet through swipes), PUREBET (which is focused on sports betting), DisBet (an on-chain sports betting within Discord) and many more.
The other prediction markets that I am keen to look forward is Futarchy. I have written an extensive article on the concept of Futarchy. Currently MetaDAO on Solana is focused on providing Futarchy as a service to various DAOs in the ecosystem to uplift the governance of these protocols. It is a great concept to be first implemented on DAOs and expand to other territories.
Similar to Bountycaster, the folks on Solana have Superteam which is a service DAO but has Superteam Earn website where it offers bounties and tasks for talented folks to complete the tasks and earn rewards in crypto.
Telegram with TON
Back in 2017-18, when Telegram Messenger team explored blockchain solutions, they designed TON, a decentralized network which has layer 1 components. Telegram planned to launch TON (previously Gram token) as its own cryptocurrency, but was forced to shutdown the project in 202 following an injunction by US regulators.
Post this, Telegram Team launched the Telegram Browser, which supported websites hosted on TON on both mobile and desktop to enable a seamless switch between messages and websites. This approach of onboarding users from existing messaging application has massive potential if interactive application gets built on top of TON that can be accessed on Telegram.
There are over 1000 applications on TON blockchain in which 29 applications fall under Social category. I did find dating applications more on this blockchain than any other. TON Dating is one of the top applications which is membership-based community where the most active members get rewards in TON cryptocurrency.
Ton.place is a social media gaming platform which lets users earn TONs for publishing exclusive content and sending messages to their followers. The reward systems work on the number of likes a post gets, charges for private messages and supports referral systems. The other platforms like Fox Tails and Tonex offering social network on TON platform. Zipsy is another application that replicates TikTok in Telegram. The UI design is not great and I believe the team have a long work to compete on par with other applications.
Ton has huge potential to onboard millions of users to web3 or crypto by focusing on building engaging and better UI application to its users. Onboarding via messaging platform is a huge advantage TON could leverage upon to succeed as the prominent blockchains to take a leapfrog in consumer crypto space.
My Thoughts
The idea that creators could become the “founding fathers” of new digital actions is super exciting. With Web3 social graphs, creators get to take direct control over their economic activities, which not only empowers them but also spreads value more fairly within the community.
Shifting from centralized platforms to community-driven networks is a big change in how we interact online. In Web3, users and creators have a real say in how the network develops, leading to a more democratic and user-focused internet. Traditional advertising on social media or consumer apps could decline once developers create apps that really keep users hooked. We haven’t seen the same magic in the crypto space that happened with Facebook, TikTok, or Twitter yet. For example, Farcaster has around 40,000 average users, and Lens has seen a drop in daily users. But I’m excited about platforms like Pump.Fun, Frames, and Polymarkets—they have unique features and huge potential for future applications.
Right now, a lot of crypto apps are just copying traditional business models. I’ve noticed that many developers are reusing old ideas with new tech. But when so many people are already using existing systems, why would they switch to another platform just because it’s decentralized? The key to building sticky consumer apps is content and gamification. Non-crypto folks should be offered new social media experiences with fresh business models that highlight the benefits of new technology—like ownership of content, profile interoperability, and gamification.
The apps that can really capture and hold user attention will become the next big social media platforms, valuing the true social graphs of their users, followers, and the content they engage with.
On the flip side, when building social media and consumer apps in the crypto space, developers should be aware of the pitfalls that plagued Web2 platforms, like the “Tyranny of the Marginal User.” This idea by Ivan Vendrov warns that constantly chasing more daily active users (DAUs) can end up ruining user experience and killing meaningful interactions.
When platforms try too hard to attract even the most disengaged users, they often lose depth and user agency, leading to a basic experience that focuses on superficial engagement over real connections. A prime example is how OKCupid went from being a thoughtful, compatibility-driven dating platform to a shallow swipe-based app.
Developers in the crypto space should prioritize quality interactions, meaningful user agency, and community-driven growth instead of just chasing metrics that appeal to the least engaged users. By avoiding the mistakes that led to the downfall of Web2 platforms, crypto-based social apps can offer much better alternatives that really serve their communities instead of just catering to fleeting attention.
Looking at the apps built so far, there are some additional opportunities that have potential. For example —
Novelty Tokens - Non-profits or social causes could leverage projects like Pump.fun to create novelty tokens for fundraising campaigns, with community members receiving tokens as proof of their support.
Customizable Social Media Experiences - With the current development, developers can look out to develop unique social media experiences, like collaborative storytelling, live content streams which could be directly embedded in users’ post.
Commercial Social Graphs - Building a social network that’s primarily focused on commerce, where it allows users to discover easily, trade and discuss blockchian-based assets.
Content Marketplaces - IRLs aren’t new to internet. Blinks powered by Solana, with irls have the potential to turn any content off-chain and on-chain to mint creators’ content which could lead to marketplaces to stake or trade.
Prediction Market-Based on Social Graphs - Integrating Polymarket with Farcaster, users could create prediction markets based on social media trends or content virality. This could gamify social interactions and offer financial incentives for accurate social predictions.
Royalty-Based Audio Listening Applications - I didn’t mention audio applications like Corite (which lets users to invest in music or artists they love and get a piece of their success when songs are streaming on the likes of Spotify and Apple) and Audius which serves both on Ethereum and Solana blockchains. Although it gives control to creators in selling their music and earn royalty in $AUDIUS tokens, it didn’t make huge noise within the music industry. I would like to see developers and music industry coming together and solve the royalty and commission problem in this space with the help of tokenization.
On-chain gaming - Farcaster has few games like Chess, Nethriam , DeFi Land, Genopets offering users to interact on the protocol. But no game has excited me with their interaction capability on Farcaster. I am looking forward to games like Pokemon, a remix of the classic RPG, and other Onframe games. Lens do lack gaming applications compared to Farcaster which I would say something is better than nothing.
While Solana like Star Atlas (which positions as first frontier of metaverse with NFT universe), and Aurory (a free to play gaming protocol which aims to build mini-games and wide range of games utilizing the interoperability functions across its platform.
Pumpdotfun has the potential to go mainstream, where every creator would play around with temporary tokens of long term bets on the ecosystem. Personal coins will begin to rise, on-chain games have the opportunity to break out this cycle. With Pumpdotfun, on-chain gaming could get boost provided users get to play interactive games.
I still can’t forget the early days of Facebook and what really got me hooked—its games. In-app games on Facebook were huge, and sharing leaderboards and rankings with my friends through posts was super exciting, gamified, and engaging. That was a big part of why Facebook saw such a spike in daily active users—it’s what I like to call the magic that happened when their APIs were open.
Crypto apps have that same kind of potential. They’re not just interoperable but also let users truly own their assets, which makes them perfect for gaming and other engaging experiences.
Focusing on this could be the key to bringing the next billion users into the crypto world!
References
Frame This by Decentralised.co
Mastering Lens Protocol: Everything You Need to Know
A New Internet by Joel John and Siddharth
Notes on Consumer Crypto by Joshcrnls.eth
The Tyranny of the Marginal User
Sufficient Decentralization for Social Networks
“Other sources such as in-article references are hyperlinked throughout the article”
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