DappRadar 2022: A Year in Review

dappradar.com-dappradar-report-2022

This year, developers submitted 8,255 dapps to DappRadar.

DappRadar continues to aggregate and organize the world’s blockchain data. Our goal as the World’s Dapp Store is to bring our community reliable, data-driven insights to help them discover the best products on the market. As we onboard more dapps, and continue to refine our discovery tools, we help the Web3 industry grow and mature.

In this report, we’re taking a look at how DappRadar has performed in 2022. We’re looking at our dapp integrations, how we interact with our community and which dapps are the users’ favorites. As always, we’re using data to back up our conclusions, and we’ll be using this information to make our products even better in 2023. 

Contents:

Overview

This year, developers submitted 8,255 dapps to DappRadar. Our team manually approved 5,604 of them and our machine-learning tools accepted 1,523. Out of these, 72 dapps are still in the pending process, awaiting approval to appear in the Rankings. We also rejected 1,056 dapps because we have a responsibility to protect our community by showing verified dapps. 

We reject dapps if they submit incorrect or empty token contracts, if their email address is not verifiable, if they have no website or social media presence, if they don’t follow our simple submission process properly or if there are too many red flags that the dapp is suspicious. 

The 8,255 submitted dapps is a new record for our platform, up from 7,187 last year. With so much development activity and so many creators submitting their products to DappRadar, it’s clear that Web3 will have a higher adoption in 2023.  

As you can see in the chart below, the majority of dapps submitted to DappRadar fall into the DeFi and Games category. 30.5% of approved dapps were related to decentralized finance and 18.9% of the dapps fell into the Games category.

This highlights how these two sectors are currently where Web3 investment and resources have been directed during 2022. Gaming in particular is an area where we’ve seen substantial growth over the past year, and we expect to see similar, if not more, development during 2023.

Our latest BGA report shows that Web3 Games ‘continue to be a driving force for the dapp industry.’ During October and November, blockchain gaming and metaverse projects raised $534 million in investment. Fenix Games, a Web3 publisher, announced $150 million in funding to ‘acquire, invest and distribute blockchain games.’

2022 has not only been a year when small independent dapp developers have created experimental products to test out the capabilities of Web3 technology. It’s also been the year when mainstream brands and companies adopted blockchain technology to create new products and bring Web3 to a wider audience. 

Companies like Nike (through RTFKT), and Manchester United through their partnership with Tezos, have entered the space and made big strides in onboarding non-Web3-native people. We can also see this happening in The Sandbox, with the likes of Gordon Ramsay, Paris Hilton, Tony Hawk, Forbes and Playboy all entering into commercial partnerships with the virtual world platform.

Expect to see many more famous faces attempt to leverage blockchain technology in 2023 as they look to expand their empires to reach more fans. The ones who succeed will be the ones who put real thought into what they’re doing and try to create a product that fans will want. If 2022 has taught us anything, it’s that the Web3 community can see straight through an influencer trying to ape into the community to make a quick buck. 

Who are our users?

​​Geography

In the peak months of 2022, DappRadar had over 1 million users viewing content on the site. These users come from all over the world. By looking closer at which countries these users come from, we could better understand the current state of the dapp industry and people‘s awareness of it.

From the chart above, we can see that IP addresses from the United States contributed about 18% of DappRadar’s annual traffic. More than 50% of the remaining traffic is distributed across the 24 countries and regions. Among them, China, India, Indonesia, Singapore, and Russia have relatively more shares than other countries and regions on the list.

What should not be overlooked is that the bear market, macroeconomic recession, tightened global regulations, and negative industry incidents have heavily impacted users’ confidence in the cryptocurrency industry. This is also reflected in the users’ behavior changes toward using DappRadar. 

DappRadar users in the US, UK, China, and South Korea clearly showed reduced interest in dapps in the second half of the year. But on the other hand, the popularity of dapps in countries such as India, Indonesia, Nigeria, Ukraine, and Vietnam has increased significantly.

This may be due to the fact that when people lack trust in their countries‘ financial systems and governments, they tend to look for alternatives in the crypto industry. Their motivations include seeking additional income, more convenient micro-payment solutions, and a more reliable way to store assets. And these needs are getting fulfilled progressively thanks to the innovations in the blockchain industry, such as GameFi, DeFi, and stablecoins.

Age, gender, and device

DappRadar’s user base comprises all age groups but is dominated by Gen Z and Millennials. The age distribution of our users shows a high degree of consistency with the age distribution of global internet users. However, the following comparison shows that the dapp industry has a higher penetration among Gen Z and Millennials than other age cohorts.

Device-wise, more than 52.8% of users are used to visiting DappRadar on desktops, while the rest of them prefer to use mobile devices. Regarding gender distribution, male users are the majority, accounting for 76% of our users.

Interests and hobbies

The Dapp industry has tapped into many aspects of our users’ lives and also received a lot of love from various types of users. We have sketched the profiles of DappRadar users based on their interests. The most prominent ones belong to the following ten types of people.

How does our community use DappRadar?

Our community is at the core of everything we do. It’s why we created a DAO, so they can vote on proposals. And it’s why we made the RADAR token, so our users can earn rewards for their contributions to DappRadar. It’s also why we need to know which pages our users visit the most, so we can see what they’re interested in and how we can improve our tools for them.

Looking at the data below, we can see that our Rankings pages are the most popular destination for our users. As the driver of the World’s Dapp Store, it’s where people come to find the best dapps, based on verifiable on-chain metrics taken directly from blockchains. 26.8% of everyone who visited our platform went to our Rankings, which shows just how central this product is to what we’re doing at DappRadar.

Our second-most popular pages are related to Games. 49% of all dapp activity in 2022 was game-related and the sector is the fastest-growing Web3. So it makes sense that lots of our users visit our pages to discover the best new games.

Rounding out the top three most visited pages on DappRadar are those related to NFTs. The market for digital collectibles, art, wearables and virtual land started the year off well but has seen a huge contraction in spending in the second half. Traders spent $5.7 billion on NFTs in January 2022. By November, this number had dropped to $0.5 billion.

DappRadar’s reach is truly global, as shown by the graphic below. Our international community is who we are tracking blockchain data and creating our tools for. But even though we are all one group of Web3 users, there are some differences in taste based on location.

As you can see, Pegaxy and Farmers World feature as the most popular games for many nations, with six countries using the former most regularly and five countries having the latter as their most-visited gaming dapp. Interestingly, despite having a difficult 2022 for a number of reasons, Axie Infinity is still the most popular Web3 game for three countries: USA, Russia, and the Philippines.

It’s difficult to know which blockchain came out on top in 2022. Some people would claim that the rise of the Layer-2 networks is proof that they are the future of Web3. Others would argue that Ethereuem’s dominance in NFTs and as the base layer for many other protocols makes it the number one blockchain. But looking at the graphic below, it would seem that dapps built on BNB Chain are attracting the most user interest.

Our users visited pages related to BNB Chain dapps 2.67 million times. This is more than double the number of people who visited Ethereum dapp pages, with 1.27 million users going to those. Polygon is in third place, with people making 974,000 visits to pages for dapps built on network.

While there is probably space for multiple blockchains to operate side-by-side in the future, it’s unlikely that the market will be able to sustain as many as we have now. Which networks win the race to be still be here in ten years will depend on how many high-quality dapps are built on their infrastructure. Because without users, an ecosystem will wither and die.

On the basis of the information above, it seems BNB Chain is currently at the head of the pack in terms of how many people are using their blockchain to engage in Web3 activities. In a year’s time, will the order have changed and might we see WAX on top, or perhaps Polygon? Check back in at the end of 2023 to find out.

What do users love about DappRadar?

In this section, we will see which tools users like the most from DappRadar. We calculated which DappRadar products users like to interact with the most, and the results of this data are presented in the pie charts below. These percentages tell us which DappRadar pages users are more likely to perform clicks.

Clearly, our all-inclusive Rankings tool has been trusted by many users. 48% of the clicks on DappRadar are generated on Rankings. This result once again reminds developers and product owners that they should upload their products to our Rankings because this can bring significant exposure. More importantly. This way user interest can be converted into actions more effectively.

Next, let’s zoom in a bit more and focus on the most popular categories and the applications under them.

According to industry reports released by DappRadar in the recent year, the gaming segment accounts for nearly 50% of the blockchain’s usage. From the same BGA Report mentioned earlier, we learned that gaming accounted for 42.67% of industry-wide blockchain usage in November, with daily unique active wallets reaching 800,875. This figure is down from the previous month but still prevails.

In addition to blockchain usage, users’ DappRadar preference confirms that blockchain games are in high demand. Games got the most views from DappRadar users, with only one exception, and that is OpenSea, the industry’s largest NFT marketplace by volume.

The table below shows the most popular dapps in each category among DappRadar users. You can also use our Single Dapp Page feature to see the metrics of each project. 

Click on any dapp on the DappRadar Rankings to go to their Single Dapp Page.

Dapps of the year

DappRadar has spent the past year working to bring more transparency to the dapp industry. On our blog, we feature those dapps that outperform their competitors or make a splash within a short period of time.

Moreover, we do our best to give users a deep yet comprehensive picture of dapps through our data tools, reports, and AMAs. 

Here, we want to share dapps in each category that were integrated into DappRadar Rankings this year and have managed to gain significant traction with DappRadar users. 

Game – Tiny World

Tiny World joined the DappRadar Rankings in February this year, and its Single Dapp Page is among the most-viewed ones. Regarding gameplay, Tiny Kingdom is an idle trading game where players use their free time to fight and trade for profit.

Tiny World released a series of more exciting gameplay in the second half of 2022, such as Boss Raid, Quest Carnival, Tiny Lord, and more. These new elements have brought the game a giant leap in popularity. As a result, Tiny World’s on-chain metrics skyrocketed starting in August and have remained steady ever since. At the same time, the traffic of this dapp’s product page in August also climbed at a similar pace.

Social – Galxe

Social was one of the most vibrant segments in Q4 this year, with many innovative projects launched to unlock the potential of Web3 social networking, Soulbound token, and utility NFTs.

Among the various social dapps, Galxe is undoubtedly one of the most visible. The dapp has witnessed nearly 700,000 unique active wallets interacting with its smart contracts in the last 30 days, ranking 5th among all dapps.

Galxe is an open and collaborative credential data network accessible to all developers in Web3. With Galxe, users can curate digital credentials and contribute to the data network. As a result, brands and projects can leverage Galxe’s permissionless NFT infrastructure to gamify their loyalty systems, conduct marketing campaigns, acquire users, and more.

DeFi – GoodDollar

GoodDollar does not have the highest TVL or activity compared to the top projects in the DeFi industry. This is because it has a specific niche. But still, the project is one of the most viewed DeFi dapps on DappRadar

GoodDollar is a non-profit universal basic income platform initiated by the cryptocurrency investment platform eToro. The project aims to narrow the global wealth gap through DeFi and blockchain technology. 

The platform invites Supporters to stake funds through DeFi protocols such as Aave and Compound, which allows them to receive the generated interest as a reward. At the same time, the protocols mint G$ tokens in this process, allowing Claimers to collect them from the platform when needed.

To use GoodDollar, users must go through identity verification, including face recognition. Therefore, the chances of the protocol being taken advantage of by bots are very low. According to DappRadar’s SDP data, the program’s overall performance in 2022 is very stable, managing to attract over 30,000 UAW on a daily basis.

Marketplace – X2Y2

Decentralized NFT marketplace X2Y2 entered the public eye in February this year with a vampire attack on OpenSea. With strategies such as sharing platform profits with X2Y2 token stakers, X2Y2 has now become one of the largest NFT marketplaces in the industry.

DappRadar released tracking of X2Y2 as soon as the project went live, providing reliable information for users, media, and developers to conduct further research on the dapp.

Despite the NFT market activity declining month by month, Y2X2 has achieved impressive results in terms of on-chain metrics. 

Collectibles – Otherdeed for Otherside 

When the industry’s most visible NFT project, Bored Ape Yacht Club, launched its metaverse lands, an instant sellout was guaranteed. 

On April 30, 2022, Otherdeed, the Otherside metaverse virtual lands, sold out within minutes despite skyrocketing gas fees on Ethereum, generating around $320 million for Yuga Labs, the team behind BAYC.   

Users’ interest in Otherdeed on DappRadar peaked in May and has since tapered off, with patterns highly consistent with the project’s trading volume. But interestingly enough, that didn’t stop Otherdeed from being in the top 10 NFT collections with the highest cumulative trading volume of all time.

Final words on DappRadar’s year

One of the most valuable lessons from this year is that transparency is gold in the Web3 industry. This emerging industry could be very vulnerable to unexpected events. By providing data-driven information across DeFi, NFTs, games, and more, DappRadar helps users gain comprehensive, unbiased insights into dapps, protocols, and blockchain ecosystems. 

2022 leaves us in a bear market, but Web3 developers and practitioners are not defeated. Since DappRadar has integrated more dapps this year, it helps bring users a blockchain ecosystem blueprint that is closer to reality. 

As developers continue to build, we will also provide more effective tools to help users, investors, and other stakeholders gain a deeper understanding of this ever-changing industry.

Whether we’re talking about DappRadar’s newly launched API service, aiming to help all kinds of users benchmark success, set up business goals, and keep an eye on industry trends, or whether we’re talking about all the innovation that’s to come in 2023. 

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