2020 Q1 Dapp Market Report by DappReview

DR-Jason

3 years ago


As the Black Swan of 2020, the Coronavirus outbreak spread rapidly around the world and triggered the global market sell-off. Crypto market tumbled sharply in two consecutive days in March, which had a direct impact on the dapp market in Q1.

Q1 Highlights

  • A total transaction volume of $ 7.9 billion across 13 blockchains, increased by 82.2% compared to 2019 Q1. The major three protocols, Ethereum, TRON and EOS, contributed over 99.1% of the total volume. Only Ethereum had growth YoY, while TRON and EOS both suffered decreases in users and transaction volume.
  • Ethereum-based DeFi projects are the main volume growth driver, increasing 778% compared to 2019 Q1.
  • Casino dapps, the popular category in last year, were down 64.6% in terms of volume.
  • The total active addresses interacted with dapps dropped 22.1%.
  • 254 new dapps were launched in Q1, 60% lower than Q1 2019.
  • Game, Exchange and Casino are the top 3 sectors in terms of active addresses
  • Many creative new products are launching and evolving in the Game, NFT, CryptoArts space.


This report includes two parts. Part one will focus on data and charts, presenting the latest stats of the dapp industry in the first quarter and some interesting findings. Part two will be a re-cap of the key projects and updates (you might miss) and what to expect in Q2.

ETHEREUM

The total transaction volume of Ethereum dapps in 2020 Q1 was $5.64 billion, an increase of 652% compared to the last Q1($743 million). The main growth was driven by DeFi projects which have become the growth gist of Ethereum since 2019, with the largest transaction volume. It is worth noting that most of the volume of DeFi projects are in ERC-20 tokens (such as WETH, DAI, USDC, etc.), rather than the native token Ether.


Of the $5.64 billion transaction volume of Ethereum in Q1, 84% was generated by ERC-20 tokens. The big sell-off day March 12th was a busy day not only for centralized exchanges but also for DEX and lending dapps. The transaction volume of the Ethereum dapps reached a historical peak of $326 million on this day, mainly contributed by MakerDAO, dYdX and other DeFi projects.


In 2020 Q1, the Ethereum dapp ecosystem remains diverse and the performance was very steady compared to the other blockchains. Dapps in categories like Game, Casino, and Other have maintained the level of last year, while Finance and Exchange dapps have gained huge growth over the last 3 months.

In this report, we categorize lending projects (eg, Maker, Compound, bZx, etc) and derivatives projects like Augur as "Finance", and decentralized exchanges (eg, Kyber, Uniswap, Tokenlon, etc) as "Exchange". These two types of projects together are typically referred to as the DeFi sector.

Compared to 2019 Q1:
  • The transaction volume of Finance dapps reached $2.95 billion, an increase of 1,743%
  • The transaction volume of Exchange dapps reached $2.34 billion, an increase of 430%


In terms of active addresses, the average DAA (Daily Active Addresses) of Ethereum in 2020 Q1 was 16,763, an increase of 55.86%. Most of the growth is driven by Finance dapps and Risk dapps (aka, Ponzi Scheme, eg. Doubleway, MillionMoney). Excluding Risk dapps, the average DAA is 12,505, with the growth of 23.55%.


The total number of Ethereum active addresses in 2020 Q1 is 422,871, and 243,252 of them are Risk dapps users, accounting for 52.29% of the total, mainly from Doubleway and MillionMoney. From our observation, a large number of these addresses playing Ponzi schemes are bots trying to manipulate the users/volume stats.

As more and more use cases of DeFi, a total of 31,299 addresses have interacted with Financial dapps, increased by 234.86%. Meanwhile, despite the transaction volume of the Casino dapps being almost flat, the number of active addresses has increased by 39.88%.

There are 641 active dapps on Ethereum in 2020 Q1, which is 173 fewer than the last Q1.
  • 33 active in Finance, an increase of 18.
  • 72 active Exchange dapps, unchanged compared to 2019 Q1.
  • There are 180 active Game dapps, 42 less, but still the most active category.
  • Only 71 active Casino dapps, 50% less than 2019 Q1

TRON

The total transaction volume of TRON dapps during 2020 Q1 was $411 million, down 73.8% YoY (2019 Q1: $1.57 billion). Casino dapps on TRON expanded rapidly in the first half of 2019 when many new Casino dapps joined the TRON ecosystem. Users were attracted by the dividends of gambling mining tokens. 888TRON made a single-day record of $82 million volume in March 2019. As users' fever faded away, there is no phenomenal Casino dapp on TRON this year. The daily transaction volume is quite stable this quarter at an average amount of $4.57 million.


In terms of categories, Casino dapps still dominate TRON blockchain with 92.1% of total volume. Dapps in almost all categories declined in transaction volume compared to 2019 Q1:
  • The transaction volume of Casino dapps was $379 million in 2020 Q1, a decrease of 72.5%.
  • Game dapps performed a total volume of $2.35 million, down 63.56%.
  • The volume of Exchange dapps was $28.21 million, dropped by 82.7%.



The total active addresses of TRON dapps in 2020 Q1 was 237K, and the average DAA was 25K, dropped by 39.48% YoY. Active addresses declined at different levels for sectors like Casino, Game and Exchange. Zethyr, launched at the end of 2019, was the first and only Finance dapp on TRON. At the end of March this year, Justin Sun unveiled project Djed on Twitter, a MakerDAO-like stablecoin system, which will become an integral part of the DeFi ecosystem on TRON.


In Q1 2020, there are 342 active dapps on TRON in total, including 66 new ones.
  • 121 active Casino dapps, an increase of 29.
  • 48 active Games dapps, decreased by 9.
  • Other categories did not change much.

EOS


EOS dapps still have not fully recovered from EIDOS mining activities. The Q1 total transaction volume of EOS dapps was $1.74 billion, slightly down 11.67% YoY, while the average DAA has dramatically dropped from 85K to 11K, nearly 87%.


Similar to TRON, EOS is also a popular blockchain for Casino dapps. In 2019 Q1, 79.67% of the EOS dapps transaction volume was contributed by Casino dapps, totaling $1.61 billion. During 2020 Q1, the volume was down by 74.95%. While for Exchange dapps, the transaction volume jumped 226.26% from $386 million to $1.2 billion. Now, it accounts for 72.55% of the total volume, becoming the largest sector on EOS.


Because of the impact of EIDOS, users had a really poor experience when playing Game dapps and Casino dapps on EOS. Many dapp teams have chosen to leave the EOS ecosystem.
  • The transaction volume of Game dapps decreased by 86.30%, and total active addresses decreased by 42.58%.
  • The transaction volume of Casino dapps decreased by 74.95%, and total active addresses decreased by 86.01%.
  • The transaction volume of Risk dapps increased by 10.94%, and total active addresses increased by 146.09%.


In 2020 Q1, there are 406 active dapps on EOS, but only 19 of them are newly launched.
  • 184 active dapps in Casino, still the most, but 95 less YoY.
  • 69 active Game dapps, dropped by 5.
  • 88 active Other dapps, 16 more than 2019 Q1.


In terms of active addresses, Ethereum dominates in sectors like Games, Exchanges and Finance. TRON tops the Casino category.


In terms of transaction volume, undoubtedly, Ethereum dominates the DeFi sector (ie, Financial and Exchange). EOS and TRON share the Casino volume. Besides, EOS also has substantial market shares in the Exchange category.

Besides the top three protocols, another four competitors also achieved $ 10+ million volume in Q1.

NEO

Neo is one of the earliest open network blockchains built for the smart economy. Many excellent blockchain games joined Neo last year, including Blockchain Cuties, NeoFish and XPET World.

0xGames announced the integration of Neo Blockchain for 0xWarriors and 0xRacers in Q1. As the launching event, 0xGames will offer a 50% discount on all 0xRacers pre-sale on Neo starting from April 1st. Another NEO-based casual game "NeoFish" added Staking mode to integratie DeFi mechanics into the gameplay.


In 2020 Q1, there are 28 active dapps on Neo, and the total transaction volume of them was $11 million. On 28th January, the daily transaction volume peaked at $555K mainly contributed by decentralized exchange Switcheo.

Early this year, Switcheo announced an equity investment by Neo Eco Fund. At the same time, Switcheo will deepen its support for the Neo ecosystem by allowing trading fees on Switcheo Exchange to be paid using GAS tokens instead of SWTH tokens.

More and more interesting dapps are joining the Neo ecosystem. Novem will tokenize the physical gold to provide users a more secure and convenient experience to trade and store golds.

ICON

In March, DappReview officially integrated ICON blockchain, to showcase the ICON dapps and provide trusted data analytics to users.

ICON Network is a general purpose blockchain protocol based on the native cryptocurrency ICX that can run smart contracts, adopt the BFT-DPoS (Delegated Proof-of-Stake) consensus protocol, and use an economic-governance protocol called DPoC (Delegated Proof-of-Contribution).


In 2020 Q1, the total transaction volume of ICON dapps was over $19 million. ICON already has 7 active dapps on the consumer side. There are DAO platforms like ICONBet and ICON Vote. Most of the Q1 volume was contributed by ICONBet. STAYGE, an incentivized fan community for K-pop music, has the largest user base on ICON.

IOST

IOST is a high-performance blockchain based on "Proof of Believability" (PoB). In 2020 Q1, there are 34 active dapps on IOST, of which Game and Casino are the two main dapp categories.


In 2020 Q1, the total transaction volume of IOST dapps was $10 million. On January 16, the daily transaction volume of IOST dapps peaked at $701K mainly driven by Casino dapp iPirates.

TOMO

TomoChain is an innovative solution to the scalability problem of Ethereum. In 2020 Q1, there are 15 active dapps on TOMO, and Casino is the main dapp category.


TomoMaster is the most popular dapp, which is the official staking dapp of TOMO. In 2020 Q1, the total transaction volume of TOMO dapps was $12.92 million, and the daily transaction volume peak is $838K.


Q1 Recap & What to Expect

Despite the global panic and market sell-off in Q1, we have been seeing a lot of progress and awesome products made by BUILDers in dapp space. Here's a list of selected Q1 updates you wouldn't want to miss. (Due to the time constraint, we may not be able to cover all the important events/updates/projects, feel free to make a comment if you wanna add something)

Game

Skyweaver
Horizon, the team behind TCG Skyweaver, has received $ 5million investment this year, led by Initialized Capital, and other investors including Consensys, CMT Digital, and Regah Venture. Skyweaver also launched the Season 0 after the pre-season test, with several new elements, 5 new heroes, 100 more cards and an updated matchmaking system.

The Sandbox
TSB Gaming, the affiliate of Animoca, has raised $2.01 million in cash and cryptocurrency for its blockchain metaverse game The Sandbox. Investors included Square Enix, B Cryptos, and True Global Ventures. The Sandbox launched the 2nd and 3rd rounds of LAND presale, both were very successful with a total of 4200+ ETH sales. The team continued building up its ecosystem by cooperating with Atari, Neon District, Opera, etc.

Decentraland
Decentraland was officially launched on Feb 20, with an epic 4-day Treasure Hunt. Players could explore Decentraland's metropolis, Genesis City, to find NFTs, tokens and a virtual item redeemable, totalling $100k USD in value. A Decentraland avatar named "Crypto" was sold at the price of 61,550 MANA, which was worth $1,500.

Axie Infinity
Axie Infinity, the digital pet blockchain game with adorable characters, launched Community Alpha featured with battle mode last year. In 2020 Q1, the game teamed up with MakerDao and Kyber, and held the tournament event "The Infinity Cup" with DAI prizes. Also, Axie has integrated Kyber to allow players to purchase items with selected ERC20 tokens.

SoRare
Sorare, the blockchain-based football card game, has partnered with famous football clubs, including Juventus , Atlético Madrid , West Ham, Lyon, to launch NFTs of the football players. Juventus bundle made a new sale record at 10.992 ETH on 26th Feb.

Nine Chronicles
Nine Chronicles, a blockchain-based RPG backed by Ubisoft and Planetarium, will launch the Closed Beta Test in mid-April. The game features a fantasy world where players could explore the dungeons, craft and trade items. If you apply for participation.

My Crypto Heroes
In February, My Crypto Heroes announced cooperation with CryptoSpells, connecting two game worlds by NFT assets. Within one year and 3 months after release, My Crypto Heroes achieved 100K users milestone.

Brave Frontier Heroes
Brave Frontier Heroes was officially launched on Jan 30 by doublejump.tokyo, the developer of My Crypto Heroes. The game quickly became the 2nd most popular game with around 1,500 daily active addresses. During Q1, Brave Frontier Heroes has successfully held 9 rounds of ranking matches.

Gods Unchained
The blockchain TCG Gods Unchained released the new feature of Flux & Fusing, the key mechanics for "play to earn" that players could monetize their playtime. The first expansion Trial of the Gods is expected to launch within a few months, and a lot of the new cards have been revealed.

Somnium Space
Somnium Space, the social VR platform, launched Somnium 2.0 in February, with unique features that help the creators to design and deploy the creations. In the following parcels sales, 25 parcels worth 110 ETH were sold.

F1 Delta Time
F1 Delta Time, the blockchain racing game, sold a total of 2,375 crates (over $364,000 in sales) in the first official crates sale. The time trial mode was launched on 30th March, which is a mini-game that players could test their NFT collections and earn ETH.

NFT

OpenSea
On March 27, OpenSea supported the embeddable NFTs. Users could create links for their NFTs in OpenSea and embed them into their blogs and websites. OpenSea is now calling bloggers and website owners to show their NFT collection by embedding in this way.

Early this year, the co-founder of OpenSea, Devin published The Non-Fungible Token Bible, which is by far the most comprehensive and insightful writeup in NFT space. Strongly recommended.

Cryptovoxels
The blockchain metaverse game Cryptovoxels released the 2.22.0 version on Jan 6, with over 2000 parcels forged and sold. On Feb 6, the transaction volume of Cryptovoxels exceeded Decentraland which was the largest blockchain metaverse game. The weekly transaction volume was close to $ 400K.

Cryptovoxels has become a place where NFT and cryptoart enthusiasts host events and gatherings. Players made VR galleries, VR concerts and VR parties here and even held an art auction for Australian wildfires. The game was updated to the 3.19.5 version at the end of March.

SuperRare
As one of the largest CryptoArt platforms, it now has over 5,000 artworks. XCOPY became the first artist whose artworks sold more than 200 ETH on this platform. In mid-March, SuperRare became the top 1 NFT dapp(Weekly USD Traded) on nonfungibles.com.

AsyncArt
AsyncArt is a crypto art platform featured with programmable artwork that evolves over time, react to its owners. On Feb 28th, Cryptoart history was made with the sale of "First Supper" at 103 ETH. With 22 layers that can be changed, "First Supper" has billions of different states.

Avastars
Avastars are generative arts stored on Ethereum. Each Avastar is composed of randomly generated characteristics. It launched presale on Feb 7, and sold their NFTs for 183 ETH in 4 days. At the end of March, Avastars announced the official launch with more combinations and the rarity of Traits.


DeFi

Maker
To help Dai reach more use cases, Maker announced a move into gaming through the new Dai Gaming Initiative. Many blockchain games have started with Dai integration, eg, Axie Infinity, Forgotten Artifacts, SkyWeaver, etc.

On Mar 12, MakerDAO had roughly $4 million in outstanding under-collateralized debt, because some users successfully won auctions to gain ETH with 0 DAI bids during the crypto market sell-off. Maker then adjusted the risk parameters, and froze the liquidation module. MKR auctioned off in lots for 50,000 Dai. At the end of March, the Maker fund announced that the transfer of MKR token control from it to the Maker governance community was complete. The MKR token contract is now 100% in control of MKR holders.

Uniswap
Uniswap announced to release the V2 in the 2nd quarter, which would contain the new features, such as supporting any ERC20/ERC20 pairs, optimize oracles and lightning loan, etc. The 24-hour trading volume reached $53 million during the market collapse in March.

Dharma
Dharma deployed the dToken, which enables Dharma to make money alongside their users. dTokens allocate 90% of the interest earned by the underlying cTokens to dToken holders. P2P Payments are live on Dharma, so that users could pay and receive US dollars with their friends.

Rocket
The NFT loan platform Rocket had issued 4 loans with Dai, NFT in Decentraland and crypto art. One of them had been delayed. Rocket then cooperated with Bullionix and issued 5 special gold-backed NFTs with 5 grams gold.

dForce
Introducing USR, USDx holders will be entitled to a systematic interest by simply depositing USDx into the USR contract. Lendf.Me Added support to DAI.

bZx
bZx is a decentralized protocol for tokenized margin trading and lending. On 14th Feb, hackers attacked bZx and got a profit of 1,193 ETH. Another oracle manipulation attack occurred on 18th Feb. The attacker extracted a net profit from bZx of around $600,000. The two attacks exposed the systemic financial risk of DeFi. bZx Integrated with Chainlink to prevent future price oracle exploits.

Kyber
In late January, Kyber crossed $500 million and 600,000 fully on-chain trades since launch. At the end of February, KNC tokens were launched on Coinbase Pro, which not only increased the liquidity of KNC but also greatly expanded the user base of KyberDAO. Katalyst, the major protocol upgrade, has been deployed on the testnet.

Compound
Compound launched a multiple languages version in Q1. In February, a stress test conducted by Gauntlet Networks showed that Compound can scale total borrowed value by 10x without greatly improving its risk, staying at a less-than-1% chance of going default. In early March, Compound deployed the governance token COMP to empower community governance.

PoolTogether
On 3rd Feb, the lossless lottery project PoolTogether had raised $1 million from IDEO CoLab Ventures, ConsenSys Labs and DTC Capital. At the end of February, PoolTogether minted plDAI tokens (ownership of tickets) and plUSDC tokens (claim on the asset deposited) to allow users to transfer lottery tickets to the others.

dYdX
dYdX has broken its all-time high for trading volume with over $17.75 million trades on 9th Mar. dYdX introduced trading fees to cover gas costs starting 10th Mar. 2020.

Kava
As the first DeFi project on Cosmos, Kava deployed the CDP Testnet 4000 on February 5. After that, it cooperated with the blockchain social media Commun to establish the Kava community. In March, Kava cooperated with Chainlink to develop a safe and reliable decentralized financial product. At the end of March, Kava announced that the Testnet 5000 is ready which marks a first-ever cross-chain transfer between two Cosmos chains and the final major step towards the creation of USDX with BNB.


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