Blockchains vs DApps: which is needed in greater quantities?

This is clearly an apples and oranges comparison but it's something that's nonetheless being discussed in our ecosystem as the number of blockchains just seems to be continually growing with fewer apps.

In this industry, when it comes to apps, we're mostly stuck with wallets, DeFi yield apps and dexes in great numbers. There's not a lot of effort to build anything beyond that.

You know, after typing that, I realize I didn't even think of blockchain games as they seem to be temporarily dead and that's sincerely sad because games are just simply the best apps category because quantities would not be a saturation given how games can be developed around diverse things

The bottom line is, the most we have when it comes to DApps are just wallets and exchange apps that are most times also DeFi yield/lending protocols. We can talk about social apps of course, but there's very little going on there, otherwise X, Telegram and Discord wouldn't be the default space for community engagement.

That said, why is there even a blockchain vs DApps debate in the first place?

If you ask me, this isn't necessarily a blockchain fatigue, it's most likely an L2 fatigue because according to data from L2beat there's currently about 150 L2 blockchains and guess how many L1s there are?

122, according to CoinMarketCap.

Now, when you consider that the above stated number of L2s are Ethereum L2s, then it's even worse and makes more sense why people should feel frustrated with these blockchain networks popping up every other week.

Certainly, we don't need to talk about its effects on Ethereum today, it's been discussed a lot already and most people are aware.

Moving on. People are generally just mad at seeing a huge number of new chains with similar roadmaps getting funded and launched only for them to just be avenues for market manipulation for the profit of insiders.

So, the cry for more DApps than chains emerges.

Apps over chains, nonetheless

Generally speaking, we do need more apps.

We need more apps to break blockchains to discover areas that need improvement but more importantly, we need more apps to onboard the masses because more chains are really just stupid when the current ones barely power apps solving real world problems at an extensive level.

Blockchains, being general-purpose for the most part, means that we can have 1,000,000 blockchains and the ecosystem would not experience significant addition to its valuation.

This is because people generally aren't using blockchains, they are using apps and capital injections only happen when there's more apps that require just that, otherwise we just have a situation where current capital just rotates to wherever solves the internal problem at any given point.

Example of such scenarios is users simply switching networks on centralized exchange apps simply to enjoy cheaper withdrawal fees. They generally don't care about the chain, they could even hate it, but if it's cheaper and assets get to the same destination as the costlier chains, it's the only scenario that there's a conscious use of any chain and even then, this is like toggling a button within an app to use a different feature and not a case where the variety of options really makes a lot of sense because generally speaking, if assets are in non-custodial wallets then multiple chains solves nothing when it comes to unexpected fee spikes that users would want to avoid.

All of this points to the fact that apps are really what's needed in greater numbers, not chains. I mean, a single individual can have a need for 10 apps but no way in hell will the average person need to use 10 chains.

Of course, this isn't to say that having more chains isn't crucial, just that its developments should actually be slower and building applications that actually solve real world problems should be the focus.

Blockchains are networks that developers and investors will generally care a lot about, but users will only ever care about the applications that ease their lives.

Sure, the operations they perform get settled on the blockchain, which should technically mean that they are using these chains but that's really not what's relevant. Nobody watching Netflix is a user of AWS, even though that's what powers Netflix.

The underlying tech matters because it makes the apps work, yes, but building more underlying tech when there's barely the market for it is stupidity. Blockchain’s target market isn't users, but app developers and investors. When we have more apps, that brings more users, then these users will run into problems that these apps can't solve within their current development environment, then it will be logical for more chains to emerge.

Posted Using INLEO