Dapp Industry Review|Q2 2020

Home , Airdrop (cryptocurrency), CryptoPunks

DappRadar 2020 Q2 Dapp Industry Review

Total transaction volume across all tracked protocols reached $12 Billion in Q2 2020.

There are many ways to measure the state of the blockchain sector. At DappRadar, we are tracking daily active wallets, transactions, and trading volume. This data gives us a window into how each individual blockchain and the wider dapp ecosystem is performing.

The first half of 2020 in the blockchain world seems very promising. In terms of total daily active unique wallets, the 13 blockchains listed on DappRadar already hold more than 70,000 daily wallets. The major activity is occurring within the top three blockchains: Ethereum, TRON, and, EOS.

Total transaction volumes reached $12 Billion in Q2 2020. $4.5 billion higher than it was in Q1 2020. The Ethereum blockchain accounts for 82% of the total created value and the majority of it belongs to the DeFi ecosystem.

Despite the incredible development of Ethereum, EOS and TRON don’t seem to be giving up and both shows increased daily activity in Q2 2020. WAX and ThunderCore are increasing their user bases respectively thanks to a few specific gambling dapps.

While one group of blockchains are trying to emulate the success of the leader, the others are still on the battlefield. The now well- documented rivalry of Hive and Steem continues to rage and recently it became clear that Hive has taken the leadership position in regards to daily active unique wallets.

Key takeaways

● Ethereum stands as the most significant blockchain even given the gas price jump. The value of blockchain grew by $4.5 billion in Q2 2020 if compared to Q1 2020.

● TRON is attempting to diversify its dapp portfolio by adding DeFi into the blockchain bucket. Still, 80% of activity has remained within the Gambling & High-Risk categories.

● After a major loss in daily active unique wallets due to the EIDOS token drop back in Q4 2019. EOS seems to be recovering in Q2, 2020 with growth being led by two games: Upland and Crypto Dynasty.

● The battle between Hive and Steem continues, but the popular Steem game Splinterlands amongst others moving to Hive in June 2020 has given Hive the advantage.

● Our ‘best of the rest’ in Q2 2020 goes to WAX and ThunderCore. Where we see that current growth is being driven by Gambling dapps.

Table of Contents

Ethereum 4 - 15 ● First steps toward mass adoption ● DeFi ● DEX ● Games & Marketplaces ● Gambling & High-Risk ● Collectibles ● Conclusions

TRON 16 - 21 ● First steps to creating a DeFi ecosystem ● DeFi ● DEX ● Gambling & High-Risk ● Games & Marketplaces ● Conclusions

EOS 22 - 30 ● Is it game over for EOS? ● DeFi ● DEX ● Gambling & High-Risk ● Games & Marketplaces ● Conclusions

Other Protocols 31 - 40 ● Hive & Steem ● WAX ● ThunderCore ● IOST ● BORA

● Ontology ● Waves ● VeChain ● NEO Ethereum

Taking a high-level view, 2020 has proven to be a critical year for the Ethereum and DeFi ecosystem. First of all, Ethereum 2.0 is expected to be launched within 2020 that might trigger not only a jump in the price of ETH but also an increase in the adoption of the chain.

Furthermore, Reddit with 430 million users is poised to become a major blockchain onramp with the rollout of its new Ethereum- based pilot program for a reputation system.

Nevertheless, amongst all this positivity some major events in the DeFi and DEX space regarding growth and security aspects have appeared.

From the protocol currency pricing perspective ETH is still the second strongest cryptocurrency. The price is still very volatile though. We have already witnessed the price reaching more than $300 and suddenly collapsed to around $110 in March 2020. On the other hand, as per the average price for 2020 half of the year compared to 2019 half of the year, we observe an increase of 11%.

Another important aspect of the Ethereum blockchain to consider is gas prices. Different than in the previous quarters, high gas prices were observed throughout the second quarter of 2020. The Games category seems to have been affected the most with the increase in gas price triggering a decrease of 80% in daily activity.

In general, looking from the daily activity perspective Ethereum has decreased by 15% compared to Q1 2020. As already suggested the decline was triggered by the Games category with daily active unique wallets down from 10,000 to 2,000.

Nevertheless, DeFi and DEX show very positive signs reaching almost 5,000 and 4,000 wallets respectively by the end of Q2. With

this in mind, we see the growing DeFi and DEX ecosystem compensating for the loss in Gaming.

Ethereum - Decentralized Finance

As expected, 2020 thus far has been the year of DeFi development, uncertainty, and volatility. The main events that already occurred in 2020:

● Black Thursday in March 2020 ● Security incidents: Uniswap, Lendf.me, Curve, etc. ● Bitcoins increasing involvement in DeFi projects and other BTC-pegged tokens. ● Compound’s finance token COMP became a DeFi unicorn and the rise of Yield farming.

Looking solely into the facts we can conclude that 2020 is already an extremely fascinating year for DeFi. Furthermore, it is equally important to review the main metrics within the category.

The first thing to consider is daily active wallets.

At the beginning of 2019, we barely see 200 active wallets within the category. By the end of Q1 2020, we see around 1,500 active wallets, and by the end of Q2 2020 around 4,000.

This gives the growth of around 500% year-on-year and around 200% quarter-on-quarter. It means that within just six months DeFi became the third-largest category within Ethereum holding 24% of total activity.

The majority of DeFi dapps showed increased activity but the biggest surge came from Compound due to release of the COMP token. Almost 45% of the DeFi category activity belongs to Compound with a growth of 1,000% quarter-on-quarter.

The second place belongs to Synthetix with 550 daily active wallets and third place goes to 1inch with around 490 daily active wallets. Major developments have occurred in the number of daily active wallets within all major DeFi dapps both year-on-year and quarter-on-quarter.

The second metric to look at is the value of DeFi. There are different ways to measure the activity of DeFi from a value perspective. At DappRadar we calculate transaction volumes.

If looking at DeFi transaction volumes we can spot that DeFi already holds $11 billion in 2020. This is 2.5 times higher than it was within all of 2019. This metric shows the growth of the DeFi category by 1,410% year-on-year and 150% quarter-on-quarter.

From this metric perspective, we see that the DeFi category is not only the number one category but also holds 80% of the value within the Ethereum blockchain in Q2 2020. On the other hand, it is also common to look at the state of DeFi through a total value locked perspective. Total Value Locked (TVL) surged by 140% from the end of Q1 2020 reaching $1.2 billion by the end of Q2 2020.

Source: DeFi Pulse N.B: DapprRadar TVL Tracking Now Available

To conclude, we witness huge spikes within daily active wallets, transaction volumes, and total value locked. This gives us an understanding that DeFi is not only the largest category on Ethereum but also drives the growth in regards to value.

Ethereum - Decentralized Exchanges

Decentralized Exchanges are playing an important role in the growth of Ethereum and represent an important component within Ethereum’s DeFi ecosystem. Using the new DappRadar OpenData product we are able to track the trading volume and trader counts on Uniswap, IDEX, 0x, Kyber, Oasis, Bancor, and Airswap over the last 30 days.

By the end of Q2 2020, Uniswap, IDEX, 0x, Kyber, Oasis, and Bancor have each experienced strong growth. However, when looking at these 7 DEX dapps the traders count increased by 50% on average when compared to Q2 2019 and 22% on average in Q2 2020 when compared to Q1 2020. DEX stands 2nd in contributing daily activity to Ethereum, adding 25% to the total.

After the Black Thursday events which occurred in March 2020, we observed DEX trading volumes increasing drastically in Q2 2020. Dapps like IDEX, Uniswap, 0x, and Bancor are up by 144%, 109%, 44%, and 112% respectively when compared to Q1 2020.

On the other hand, we observe dominant dapps like Kyber and Uniswap trading volume surges in Q2 2020 by 220% and 624% when compared to Q2 2019.

Ethereum - Games & Marketplaces

As a category, Games & Marketplaces have historically been the driving force behind the Ethereum blockchain. But in Q2 2020 we witness a tremendous drop in daily activity by 79% quarter-on- quarter. As it has already been stated in the DappRadar overview of Ethereum gaming, high Ethereum gas prices are killing the activity of games.

By the end of Q2 2020, the category holds 2,000 active wallets, down from 10,000 in Q1 2020 which means it has plunged by 79% in Q2 2020 when compared to Q1 2020. And 65% in Q2 2020 when compared to Q2 2019.

The most affected dapps have been the categories’ biggest dapps; My Crypto Heroes, Blockchain Cuties, Knight Story, and Brave Frontier Heroes.

In Q2 2020, the transaction volume of this category is just $6.7 million which is lowest in the last 3 quarters; transaction volume collapsed by 26% when compared to Q1 2020. On the contrary, if we can see a 10% increase in volume when compared to Q2 2019.

Ethereum - Gambling & High-Risk

In Q2 2020, we witness the category growing widely in terms of daily active unique wallets when compared to Q2 2019 by 135%. The category itself stands first in regards to contributing daily activity on Ethereum, adding 32% to the total.

This increase in Q2 2020 is due to the huge number of daily active unique wallets interacting with High-Risk dapps such as HEX, Forsage, and more. In Q2 of 2020, the number of submitted High- Risk dapps rose to 73, while back in Q1 2020 there were only 23 new submitted dapps on DappRadar.

Different growth can be observed in the newly submitted dapps in the Gambling category which grew from 11 to 18 dapps submitted in Q1 and Q2 of 2020.

High-Risk dapps show explosive activity patterns as covered in a recent report on the explosive rise of High-Risk dapp HEX. The report explained how activity spiked to over 1,000 daily active unique wallets per day in mid-April to May. As of June, it seems that HEX activity already calmed down.

Forsage is the other dapp responsible for the major increase. Daily active unique wallets surged throughout April 2020 and by mid- April, it reached 1,000. As of today, it stands with 2,000 daily activities.

On that note, if we look at the transaction volume we see it has experienced an increase in Q2 2020 by 65% when compared to Q2 2019 and a 201% hike in Q2 2020 when compared to Q1 2020.

The transaction volume surge in Q2 2020 which is mainly due to HEX, Forsage, and dice2.win contributing 56%, 12%, and 12% to the total transaction volume respectively. It’s been observed that during Q2 2020 Gambling dapps have reduced their daily activity and transaction volumes when compared to Q1 2020.

Q2 2020 has been the best quarter for High-Risk dapps with 73 new dapps being released. Q3 2020 might have even higher figures than in Q2 2020. We will wait and see what happens.

Ethereum: Collectibles Last, but by no means least is the Collectibles category. The Ethereum Collectibles category is still relatively small when compared to other categories.

At peak times, the daily active wallet number is not higher than 200 daily. Nevertheless, daily activity has been increased by 50% in Q2 2020 when compared to Q1 2020.

In terms of transaction volume, the category has surged by 150% in Q2 2020 when compared to Q1 2020 and 13% when compared to Q1 2019. The only dapp causing both daily activity and transaction volume is CryptoPunks.

In May 2020, CryptoPunks generated more than $344,000 in just 7 days which clearly indicates the growth of collectibles. The total volume of collectibles in Q2 2020 is $1.5 million out of which the dapp Cryptopunks generated $1.2 million and thus we can conclude that it contributes 84% of transaction volume to the total volume of Collectibles Q2 2020.

CryptoPunks’ sudden increase proves that the Collectibles category has the potential to be very valuable and that we might expect it to become one of the major categories driving value and activity on Ethereum in the future.

Ethereum: Conclusions As already noted, 2020 is going to be a crucial year for the Ethereum and DeFi ecosystem. There are major events that give an understanding of Ethereum becoming even more important than it is now.

If looking at the past half-year of 2020 we can conclude that the DeFi and DEX categories have driven Ethereum blockchain growth. Nevertheless, governance tokens such as COMP and BAL joining the crypto family also proved to be a very powerful tool for the category’s growth.

Contrary to the DeFi ecosystem, Games category activity is down due to the increase in gas prices. This should reiterate the importance of ETH 2.0 and the value sidechains can bring to ensure the Games category on Ethereum has a healthy future.

TRON

TRON is one of the most interesting protocols, but not only from a dapps perspective. The TRON Foundation and Justin Sun’s activity in public relations seem to be very compelling too. You can easily find regular announcements regarding the TRON foundation filled with controversial commentaries.

On the other hand, looking at the high-level data TRON already faced some major changes during 2020. The biggest, the release of version TRON 4.0 and an attempt to enter the DeFi space. Nevertheless, if you look at the blockchain very briefly it appears that TRON has attracted the biggest number of daily active wallets.

The price of TRX faces plenty of volatility. Of course, there are two sides to each coin. One is more optimistic. TRX is still in the Top 20 strongest cryptocurrencies according to CoinMarketCap. The other is more negative. On average the price of TRX dropped by 41% in the first half of 2020 compared to 2019.

TRON - Decentralized Finance The DeFi category on TRON has been active since the last days of December 2019 and is starting to make a dent in Ethereum’s dominance.

In Q2 2020 it’s been observed that the growth of the DeFi category on TRON is being driven by just 3 dapps; JUST, Zethyr Finance, and Oikos.cash. In 2020, the daily active wallets increased from 74 to 796. This is 976% in Q2 2020 when compared to Q1 2020.

The major contributor to this increase in daily activity is Oikos.cash which is very similar to the Compound Finance dapp

running on the Ethereum protocol. Oikos.cash was released in April 2020 and today it has the 564 daily active unique wallets which mean its contributing 71% of the daily activity to the total activity.

The growth of daily activity is not the only part of the story. Transaction volumes have increased by 17,210% in Q2 2020 when compared to Q1 2020. In Q4 2019 with just 7 days of its existence it made $53,000, Q1 2020 it made a volume of $78,000, and interestingly in Q2 2020, the category has risen to $13.6 million.

TRON - Decentralized Exchanges In the blockchain world, decentralized exchanges (DEX) have been growing impressively in Q2 2020. However, if we observe the growth of exchanges on TRON it can be seen that it has been lagging behind. Only 19 dapps were submitted to DappRadar out of which only 8 dapps were active (any dapp with 1 or more daily active unique wallets) in Q2 2020.

TRON’s exchange dapps have been witnessing a drop in both daily activity and transaction volumes. In Q2 2020 the number of daily active unique wallets was not higher than 2,000. By the end of Q2 2020, the daily active wallet count was 1,900.

Meanwhile, if we look at the 2019 data we can see the wallet count to be 3,200 which means this category has lost 42% of daily activity in Q2 2020 when compared to Q2 2019. However, when compared to Q1 2020 we can see the growth in daily activity by 20% in Q2 2020.

It is very clear when looking at transaction volumes TRON’s DEX category has decreased month on month. In Q2 2020 it could only take 1/4th of the transaction volume of Q2 2019 and this might be due to the falling value of TRX. Transaction volume has declined by 76% in Q2 2020 when compared to Q2 2019 and 9% when compared to Q1 2020.

As previously mentioned, there are only 8 dapps that are active out of which there is only one dapp that performed well during this quarter in terms of both volume and daily activity. TronTrade with $17 million accounts for 70% of the total volume and with 911 of the total 1,915 daily active wallets.

TRON - Gambling & High-Risk Gambling & High-Risk has played a prominent role in TRON’s growth throughout the year and it continues to be the largest category. There were 494 dapps submitted to DappRadar in this category to date. Of those 494, 221 are Gambling dapps and 273 are High-Risk dapps.

Going forward, and looking at the number of active dapps in the category (any dapp with 1 or more daily active unique wallets) it’s shocking to find that there are only 97 dapps active in Q2 2020 and 105 dapps active in Q2 2019 in total.

The daily active unique wallets in Q2 2020 have increased by 39% through those 97 active dapps when compared to Q2 2019. No major changes were observed in the data from Q2 2020 when compared to Q1 2020. The increase in daily activity is being driven by dapps like RocketGame WINk, BeeHive Fast, Tron Cash.

Although there has been an increase in daily activity during Q2 2020. It’s quite disheartening to see the transaction volume collapsing quarter on quarter. In Q2 2020 TRON could only take 1/4th of the transaction volume of Q2 2019.

The volume declined by 70% in Q2 2020 when compared to Q2 2019 and by 15% when compared to Q1 2020. This decrease in transaction volume has been caused by WINk as it generated just $113 million in Q2 2020 whereas in Q2 2019 it generated almost $598 million.

TRON - Games Only 54 games running on TRON have ever been submitted to DappRadar, of which only 25 are now active. Games category in Q2 2020 is facing the same momentum as Q2 2019 which means Q2 2020 has declined the daily activity by 24% when compared to Q1 2020.

The drop experienced is clearly due to TRON Racer and Blockchain Cuties. In Q1 2020 they had 824 and 195 wallets respectively but by the end of Q2 2020 TRON Racer is inactive (with no single active wallet) whereas the Blockchain Cuties decline daily activity to 81.

ChainZ Arena is the only game which is majorly contributing to the category survive. The game is a cross-chain game that is already available on Ethereum and EOS blockchains. This dapp solely contributes 40% of daily activity to the total games category of TRON.

As it is very clear in the graph of Games transaction volume, Q2 2020 has performed better when compared to Q1 2020 however it’s going through a similar phase as the daily activity. The reason behind this category having better volume comparatively to Q1 2020 is the same dapp, ChainZ Arena, which has generated $1.2 million.

Tron - Conclusions As already mentioned, TRON has faced major changes in 2020 like the imminent launch of version 4.0 and attempts to create a DeFi ecosystem. As for DeFi, TRON – as usual – looks to be trying to replicate successful dapps that already exist on the Ethereum blockchain.

Gambling & High-Risk is still the biggest category on TRON holding 80% of activity or 16,500 daily active wallets and it doesn’t appear this state of affairs will change anytime soon. We will be following TRONs DeFi and further category developments in Q3 2020 and cannot wait to see how the year shapes up for them.

EOS

Before we jump into 2020, it is important to get some historical perspective on EOS. The EIDOS token was launched in early November 2019 resulting in a massive airdrop. The airdrop triggered massive congestion on the network by sucking up the majority of the EOS blockchain’s resources. This proved to be catastrophic for the wider EOS dapp ecosystem.

As a result of the events back in November EOS daily activity collapsed drastically. If looking into the year-on-year data, daily active wallets decreased by 53%, from almost 40,000 back in Q2 2019, to 17,000 at the end of Q2 2020.

A negative trend in the price of the EOS token is also noticeable. On average the price observed throughout the first half of 2020 when compared to the same date range in 2019 decreased by 33%. Regardless of that, the last couple of months seem to be quite stable with the token price averaging at around $2.25.

Is it game over for EOS?

Despite the negative metrics above, there is positivity within the blockchain. The number of newly submitted dapps increased in two categories: Gambling & High-Risk and Games & Marketplaces. In total 16 new dapps were submitted in Q2 2020. Four more than in the previous quarter.

Additionally, it seems that daily active wallets in the Games category are recovering. This seems to be driving the growth of the blockchain in Q2 2020 compared to Q1 2020. Wallet activity increased by 34% quarter-on-quarter.

EOS - Games & Marketplaces Games & Marketplaces is the largest category on EOS in terms of daily active wallets that accounts for 50% of total activity. The rollercoaster trend could be spotted from the beginning of 2019 until now. On the other hand, some recent trends show increased daily activity by 18% at the end of Q2 2020.

There are two dapps that appear to be driving this growth – Crypto Dynasty and Upland. Crypto Dynasty is available on two blockchains: EOS and Ethereum. On the EOS version, activity increased by 25% reaching around 4,500 daily active users.

Another dapp driving EOS growth is the virtual property trading game Upland. The game was launched in early 2020 and has already reached an impressive 2,500 daily active wallets and looks set to continue growing in the future as they improve and update the game.

Looking from the value perspective there are two dapps worth mentioning. ChainZ Arena which contributed almost $700,00 to transaction volume or 50% of the total category volume. The second is Crypto Dynasty with a growth of 18% quarter-on-quarter accounting for the rest of the transaction volumes of $701,198.

EOS - Gambling & High-Risk Gambling & High-Risk is the second largest category on EOS accounting for 13% of the daily activity. Contrary to Games & Marketplaces, it appears that Gambling & High-Risk already witnessed the peak of its momentum back in 2019. The category was responsible for the majority of the activity on the EOS blockchain. Although now we see some peak days during Q2 2020, it doesn’t look like it will return to the Q2 2019 levels. The biggest dapp that drew activity within the quarter was Dice.

The same is true for the transaction volumes that increased in Q2 2020 again due to the same Dice dapp. Both the activity of the wallets and transaction volumes looks more artificial than the real development usually observed. Leading us to believe some manipulation of user data (bots) has been occurring.

Uncharacteristic patterns usually indicate manipulation

EOS - Decentralized Finance

It seems that the current DeFi trend has also come to the EOS blockchain. A project called VIGOR has emerged that presents itself as a money market protocol to borrow, lend, and save. The platform suggests borrowing EOS while using VIGOR as collateral. As the platform itself was launched in May 2020 it is still hard to say how it is going to shape the overall EOS blockchain activity. In essence, the dapp seems to have many similar features to the Ethereum dapp MakerDAO.

EOS - Decentralized Exchanges

The EOS exchange category is another category that has declined if you look at year-on-year figures. But, recently, in Q2 2020 we see a 10% jump in the daily active wallets when compared to Q1 2020. This is driven mainly by Newdex and WhaleEx activity.

The same situation is true when observing the transaction volumes of EOS exchanges. The Newdex and WhaleEx volumes increased in value by 176% in Q2 2020 compared to Q1 2020.

EOS - Conclusions

At the end of 2019 EOS was met by serious congestion issues that led to the decrease of activity and this same trend was still present in Q1 2020.

Finally, in Q2 2020 we see some positivity within the blockchain. Almost all categories are still down compared to the highs observed in Q2 2019. The exception is the growing Games category where two games are driving the growth: Upland and Crypto Dynasty.

This brings us to understand that the growth we observe right now on EOS is based on just a few dapps, and as such is fragile. It will be truly fascinating to observe the changes in Q3 2020.

Hive & Steem

Before jumping into the numbers, it is important to understand the background of the Hive and Steem situation. Steem was acquired by the TRON Foundation and this move was characterized by many as an unwanted and hostile takeover.

The acquisition itself resulted in some members of the Steem community hard forking Steem’s code and creating the Hive blockchain. This is how the Hive protocol was born in March of 2020. Since that time, many successful dapps have switched from Steem to Hive.

Looking at the token price, the recent price is very similar for both Hive and Steem. Still, Hive seems to have driven the token price up 11% recently. On the other hand, Steem seems to have a higher ranking on CoinMarketCap due to higher market capitalization. The Steem token holds 83rd rank, while Hive only 92nd.

It has been fascinating to observe daily active wallets within Hive and Steem as the protocols faced the cross movement of important dapps like Spinterlands with a wallet base of 6,000 daily active users. As a result, we see that Hive wallet activity has grown by 213%, while Steem decreased by 23%.

As already reported in our Hive and Steem report Spinterlands is not the only dapp that switched to Hive. Another dapp – Esteem with around 500 daily active wallets also made the switch. Plus the Steemit blogging dapp has been cloned on Hive with the launch of the Hive Blog and Peakd.

To conclude, the battle continues. Nevertheless, if the trend continues as it has so far the clear winner is obvious. Despite Steem’s multiple attempts at increasing the activity, Hive seems to be planting its roots firmly in the blockchain industry and winning over users. WAX

WAX is based on the EOSIO SDK and only launched in late December of 2019. To-date, 39 dapps are being tracked. The majority of these are utility dapps which are characterized within the other category.

Games and Gambling are the two other categories that are popular right now on WAX. The most popular dapps are Prospectors and the gambling dapp EarnBet. Prospectors hold 2,000 daily active unique wallets while EarnBet is very volatile, at peak times holding 2,500 daily active unique wallets.

Overall, WAX blockchain wallet activity grew by 76% in Q2 when compared to Q1 2020 with Gambling dapp EarnBet mainly responsible for the growth.

ThunderCore

There are only 19 dapps submitted to DappRadar currently operating on ThunderCore but despite that the protocol has witnessed growth in terms of daily activity. As discussed in our Q1 2020 report. We raised a question about ThunderCore witnessing a rebirth because of the development within the protocol. Now in Q2 2020, we can definitely say that it has grown.

In Q2 2020 it has expanded daily activity by 92% when compared to Q2 2019. On that note, if we observe and compare the growth since Q1 2020 it’s definitely growing. From 617 wallets to 2,629 wallets. Growth of 326% in Q2 2020 when compared to Q1 2020.

ThunderCore daily active unique wallet activity is being stimulated by a few Gambling and Games dapps. Serious Dice shows more than a 5,000% increase in active wallets since its release and similar growth can be seen on dapp game Galaxy Blocks where an increase of 3,000% in daily active wallets can be observed.

IOST

There are 47 dapps submitted to DappRadar running on the IOST protocol out of which the Gambling and Games dapps show the most activity. The dapps driving this activity are XPET, IOST Ball, and Virus Battle. Showing a daily audience that ranges between 150 and 450 combined.

However, in Q2 2020 the overall daily activity has declined by 64% when compared to Q2 2019. But contrary to that we can see growth when compared to Q1 2020 of 6%. In that context, the remainder of 2020 will be critical for IOST if it is going to witness a breakthrough.

BORA

When compared to protocols like EOS, TRON, and Ethereum BORA is quite different. It is touting itself as purely operating within the gaming sector. It describes itself as a ‘mobile-first’ blockchain gaming service.

Based in South Korea, BORA’s approach is novel as it’s working with game developers who have already launched successful mobile games. In total, the games it plans to integrate with its blockchain technology already have over 50 million players.

DappRadar launched tracking for BORA dapps at the end of May 2020 and from the data we observe growth, but at a slow pace. There was a peak on June 1st and 2nd with the daily active wallets peaking at 216 and 105 respectively. This was due to one dapp called Seven Guardians for BORA being launched and promoted widely.

It is very early days for the blockchain and we are excited to see whether they can achieve their ambitious growth plans and potentially onboard millions of users into blockchain games.

Ontology

Ontology has faced a very tough time in terms of daily activity in Q2 2020. It can be observed that activity has declined by 95% when compared to Q1 2019.

The two most popular dapps on the Ontology blockchain – HyperDragons Go and HyperSnakes; both from Chinese developer MixMarvel – experienced a collapse in their respective audiences since February. By the end of June 2020, HyperSnakers has 0 users, whereas HyperDragons Go has only 108 daily active wallets.

Waves

DappRadar is tracking over 24 dapps running on the Waves blockchain. The protocol itself has witnessed highs and lows since Q4 2019. In Q2 2020, the daily active wallets have declined by 38% compared to Q1 2020. However, we can see there has been a drastic improvement in Q2 2020 when compared to Q2 2019.

The dapp driving this volume and user activity on Waves is the Neutrino Protocol. A DeFi product, broadly similar in features to MakerDAO in that users can lock up collateral (in this case WAVES tokens), generating the stablecoin USDN in return. Users can also stake their USDN to earn interest.

VeChain

There are only 8 dapps submitted to DappRadar currently operating on the VeChain protocol out of which only 3 are active (showing more than 1 Daily Active User) at the end of Q2 2020. Having said that, only Vexchange is making a major contribution to the protocol with 26 daily active wallets.

NEO

In Q1 2020, the Chinese-centric protocol NEO saw the launch of some new dapps. However, in Q2 2020 we can see there is no big change and that daily activity has declined by 78% when compared to Q1 2020.

In Q1 2020 NEOFish quickly gained popularity, however, in Q2 2020 the dapp is inactive. The only dapps in NEO with active users are the Switcheo Network, Nash, and Blockchain Cuties. They are the major dapps keeping the NEO protocol alive right now.

Conclusions

Etherereum continues to be the most significant blockchain, attracting a value of $11 billion in Q2 2020 to the dapp ecosystem. Growth was driven mostly by the growing DeFi and DEX categories.

Both EOS and TRON are attempting to create DeFi ecosystems within their respective protocols but it is still very early to deliver the results of such attempts. Hive and Steem seem to be still on the battlefield. Transitions of big dapps like Splinterlands and Esteem are driving the growth of Hive quickly helping it to gain the leadership position at the end of Q2.

A surge in activity triggered by gambling dapps on WAX and ThunderCore led to increased daily wallet activity. Of course, it should be noticed that growth based on a couple of dapps doesn’t ensure sustainability.