Why aren’t there more compelling “consumer” crypto “apps”?
Infrastructure is finally ready — up until recently, blockspace was expensive and slow. That’s no longer the case. In addition, improved infrastructure for adding embedded wallets, smart contract wallets, or Passkeys to any app will continue to simplify making any app “crypto aware.” On-ramp APIs, while much improved, remain the largest point of friction for a pure consumer app aiming to integrate crypto.
Few obvious ideas — it’s 2024. The consumer web is 30 years old, and the modern smartphone era is almost 20 years old. Internet software is a mature industry. Obvious ideas, whether involving crypto or not, are solved.
If it’s an existing idea + crypto, you’re usually getting, at best, a 10% improvement, not a 10x improvement. And if it’s not 10x, you won’t get many people to switch. Over the last two or so years, crypto’s brand association has been more negative, which has often made products worse overall from a growth standpoint. So naturally, the ideas that work in crypto are cryptonative. See this essay for more on that.
First published on November 22, 2024
