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DappRadar—Redefining Accuracy and Transparency in the State of Dapps

Skirmantas Januskas is the CEO and founder of DappRadar.He joined the crypto and decentralized applications (Dapps) space in late 2017 and found his interest peaked by the enthusiasm and kindness of those he interacted with in the community. He founded DappRadar in February 2018, a website that lists the best Ethereum Dapps and ranks them by DAU (Daily Active Users) showing the authentic acceptance and usability of Dapps.

Although Bitcoin kicked off the entire ecosystem of blockchain, it was Ethereum that first unlocked aspects of its true potential by allowing developers all over the world to create decentralized applications (Dapps) on their blockchain platform. Through Ethereum, developers could code smart contracts that serve as the blueprint for Dapps. Other blockchain protocols joined in, the two most major Dapp enabler alternatives to Ethereum are TRON and EOS and there are currently over 3000 Dapps running on blockchain protocols.

So which Dapps are the most used, which protocols work best? Which networks are able to scale and support your business’ decentralized application? To answer these questions is a slew of Dapp Data sites, but one site seems to rise above the others and is indeed redefining the metrics for the space—DappRadar.

Redefining the Metrics

According to Januskas, the vision for DappRadar is to be a trusted starting point for Dapp discovery and act as a distribution channel for Dapp developers that are looking to reach new consumers. DappRadar has already built a leadership position as the most trusted Dapp platform. He said, “Recent product upgrades have seen us present the most accurate data on EOS with our unique token tracking, this will be rolled out to Ethereum in November and will potentially reveal billions of dollars of undiscovered volume and completely change the way Dapp industry data is evaluated and reported. We will play a leading role in growing the market for Dapps through our commitment to working closely with Dapp developers and providing reliable data.”

DappRadar has tracked the daily metrics of over 2,700 Dapps and 12,000 smart contracts across the Ethereum, EOS and TRON blockchains since February 2018. Januskas added, “Unlike our competitors, we have a public, robust attitude in terms of filtering out what we consider ‘fake’ or ‘manipulated’ traffic, notably traffic generated by bots and we are working hard this year to provide even more product features to allow us to present the most accurate data. So how do we set ourselves apart – We focus on our product and delivering the most accurate data.”

Identifying and Combating Manipulated Data

As in any traditional industry, there will always be incentives for companies to inflate their Dapps’ performance. Trying to game the system is inherent in all sectors, and despite the relative openness of blockchain data, it continues to happen in the decentralized space.

Currently, Januskas and his team see Dapp data being actively and passively manipulated in three main ways:

Activity is actively manipulated by a Dapp boosting service to ensure Dapps remain high in rankings. This is typically driven by the developer themselves.
Dapps contain incentives that encourage players to create multiple wallets and accumulate rewards and tokens. This may be active manipulation by the developer or a byproduct of design.
The trading of Dapp tokens on exchanges is included in overall traffic data.

He said, “DappRadar has started filtering its results to remove such activity and will continue to monitor future developments, and take swift action when required to ensure our data is as accurate as possible. This may include marking Dapps we believe are engaging in manipulative and deceptive activities, potentially even blocking or delisting Dapps from our site that continue to do so.”

On spotting fake volume in Dapps, Januskas said, “We look at the anti-money laundering regulators and take note of what CoinMarketCap is doing—we are all detecting these patterns but unfortunately I cannot disclose the actual fake cases and the algorithm pattern that we have identified. We do analyze each account and each wallet to monitor the flow of money.” He reiterated, “We want our industry to be as transparent and truthful as possible so the rewards of what we are sure will be a vibrant and profitable ecosystem go to the best products, not those that are best at gaming the system.”

Ethereum vs EOS vs Tron

DappRadar recently added full token tracking for EOS Dapps which has reportedly uncovered that the EOS Dapp ecosystem may be undervalued by 1 billion dollars—as other sites typically do not track the full token.

When asked how important this new tracking revelation was for the Dapp market, Januskas said, “It’s not only important, it’s completely necessary if you want to claim to be providing the most reliable and accurate data. Our competitors do not track this way simply because they cannot until they do the background work to make it possible. More comprehensive token tracking is key to increasing the transparency of value creation in the Dapp ecosystem, especially for decentralized exchanges. For instance, Newdex (DEX) based on the EOS blockchain has seen the addition of around $5 million value in non-native tokens within the first 7 days of launch on top of their $21 million value in native EOS tokens.”

Source: DappRadar – Full Token Tracking

Specifically, with Ethereum token tracking, Januskas said, “The most challenging aspect is getting the pricing right. If you visited a number of exchanges you see ERC-20 tokens being priced differently, so this is problematic and also presents kind of an ideological challenge—which exchanges can be trusted and where can users get the price?”

DappRadar—What is the Dapp of 2019?

Skirmantas Januskas is the CEO and founder of DappRadar. He joined the crypto and decentralized applications (Dapps) space in late 2017 and found his interest peaked by the enthusiasm and kindness of those he interacted with in the community. He founded DappRadar in February 2018, a website that lists the most popular and utilized Dapps and ranks them by DAU (Daily Active Users) showing the authentic acceptance and usability of Dapps.

In the second part of our exclusive interview with Januskas, we discuss Ethereum’s transition to proof-of-stake, the growing Dapp ecosystem and the DeFi revolution instigated by MakerDao.

Staking and Scaling in the Dapp ecosystem

Ethereum has served as the main network for Dapps to be built upon, but since its creation, it has run on a proof-of-work consensus algorithm. With Ethereum announcing Eth2.0 with the transition to Proof-of-Stake (PoS), we asked Januskas what impact staking would have on transforming the current Dapp ecosystem. He said, “Many of the blockchains we already track such as EOS, TRON and Loom Network’s Basechain, use a Proof-of-Stake consensus so that part won’t be anything new. What may be more interesting with staking on Ethereum is how this could be integrated as a new feature into existing Dapps, or indeed create opportunities for new Dapps, especially in the DeFi category.”

Scalability of Dapps has been a well-recorded pain-point of blockchain adoption. Januskas acknowledged this point and commented, “Compared to centralized architectures, blockchains will always struggle in a relative sense with scalability. We’ve seen that regularly on Ethereum since CryptoKitties launched in late 2017 and EOS is currently struggling with similar issues because of the popularity of a single new Dapp which is incentivizing people to use their tokens in a new way. If you wanted to be philosophical about it, you could argue issues with scalability actually demonstrate the popularity of a particular blockchain. Or another analogy: building more roads encourages more people to buy cars and drive!”

State of DeFi

Decentralized finance (DeFi) has been making waves over the last several months following the surge in platforms and products offering DeFi services and applications. Januskas is particularly pleased with this development, he said, “Yes, the explosion in DeFi Dapps on Ethereum is proof Dapps can offer great utility and do so in a manner that is very hard to copy in the centralized software space. The major driver of this is MakerDAO’s DAI stablecoin, which enables developers to build increasingly complex products on top of a trusted layer. This level of composability is at the heart of DeFi and allows developers to come up with ever more sophisticated solutions to niche problems.”

Despite his positivity, Januskas offered a few words of caution for the DeFi space, he said, “Although a lot of value is being put into these new financial instruments, these products are no way near accessible to the mass market. And as all the developers point out, everything is in beta. It will be interesting to see the market reaction should any serious bugs or exploits emerge.”

Dapp Growth and Dapp of 2019

While DeFi has emerged as the most significant vector for Dapp growth in 2019, the game sector hasn’t been slacking. 2019 has seen the launch of new titles, some of which have quickly grown to become the most popular Dapps in terms of active wallets. In addition, some older games remain in contention for the top spot. Januskas said, “The result is that as we enter Q4, at least four titles are sustaining more than 2,000 daily active wallets. The blockchain game sector remains incredibly buoyant. The current games are a small subset of the total projects in various stages of development, with 2020 shaping up to be a very important period for this nascent industry.”

If forced to choose a “Dapp of the year” in 2019, Januskas was quick to comment, “There’s no question that MakerDAO has been the most impactful Dapp in 2019 in terms of number of users and token volumes, plus the opportunities it’s created for the entire DeFi ecosystem.” He added, “I also have a soft spot for Uniswap, which makes a complex thing – creating a crypto trading platform – very simple, also enabling users to provide its underlying liquidity.”

Dapps Should Focus on Users

As one of the main people aiming to grow the Dapp ecosystem, Januskas advised, “Dapp developers need to keep the user at the heart of everything they do. In its infancy the internet was similar. Programmers only cared about getting a site live and having it provide valuable info. The aesthetic and user experience were not even on their radar and as such it took quite a long time for the internet to become truly appealing to the masses, a transition that really happened once user experience and aesthetic became paramount.”

According to Januskas, Dapp developers have to make their products as accessible as possible and user-friendly to stand the best chance of discovery and retention. He said, “Providing users with understandable instructions and not assuming they are as knowledgeable as the developers is a good start, gameplay walkthroughs and advice for newbies on how to actually enter a Dapp is paramount to the long term success of Dapps in our opinion.”

DappRadar in 2020?

Januskas ended our interview by sharing DappRadar’s plans for 2020. He said, “We are using the $2.3M investment led by Naspers Ventures and Blockchain Ventures secured in September 2019 primarily for R&D, developing new functionality to help the business expand its services and reach the next stage in its growth. By the end of 2019, we aim to be the most accurate and reliable Dapp data source on earth.” He added, “This process is already well underway, alongside a host of UX updates. Moving into Q1 2020 we have some very exciting developer and user product updates and further token tracking across TRON and Ethereum, integration of additional protocols and the release of a proprietary, robust artificial traffic filter as part of our ‘Clean Data Mission’ for 2020. We see lots of evidence that demonstrates the long-term potential of the Dapp industry and are building a business that maximizes that into the future.”

Crypto Art Sales are Soaring as Non-Fungible Token (NFT) Market Gains Traction

Crypto art being bought and sold as ERC-721 non-fungible tokens (NFT) has been making headlines based on the record-breaking sales being witnessed. This emerging market is gaining traction in spite of the uncertain economic times, according to data acquisition and analytics company DappRadar.

Crypto art pieces selling for more than $100,000

September 21st marked the first time a crypto art piece had been bought for at least $100,000, following the unprecedented sale of “Matt Kane’s Right Place & Right Time” on Async.art. This served as a signal to show the untapped potential in this emerging market.

Per the report:

“Now, under three months later a second piece has raised over $140,000. A programmable version of a scene depicting Vitalik Buterin of Ethereum dressed like a medieval harlequin leaning against a velvet chair made records this weekend when an NFT representation sold for 260 ETH or over $141,000 at the time of writing.”

The sale of the second piece serves as the icing on the cake in terms of the most paid crypto art in dollars.

The quest for a safe haven

The coronavirus (COVID-19) has triggered a global economic turmoil, and this has heightened investors’ pursuit for a safe store of value. This is one of the factors that is making the crypto art market to gain traction.

DappRadar acknowledged:

“The trend seems to be driven by a few major factors including Investors looking for a safe store of value and the space receiving heightened attention as platforms tried to integrate DeFi mechanics such as the use of NFTs as collateral, Insurance, and the delivery of governance tokens to loyal users.”

These crypto pieces seem to be giving investors value for money because they are unique artworks. For instance, Matt Kane’s ‘Right Place & Right Time’ piece is distinctive because it produces a new image daily.

Furthermore, it comprises 24 programmable layers synchronized with Bitcoin’s price volatility in the past 24 hours. The second piece is also exceptional because it utilizes a programmable technology called layering in remaking itself each day. Recently, the top 10 decentralized applications (Dapps) on the Ethereum Network surpassed 1 million daily users, and among them was Rarible, an NFT marketplace.

NFT Sales Sales Volume Hits Record High of $10.7B in Q3

The Non-Fungible Token (NFT) ecosystem is booming, and sales volume is here to prove it. Rising over eight times from the second quarter record, sales volumes of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) grew to $10.7 billion in the third quarter of 2021, effectively depicting the sustained embrace in a frenzy picked up from the beginning of the year.

While the total sales volume, according to Reuters, citing data from DappRadar, a crypto analytics platform, in the first quarter was pegged at $1.2 billion and $1.3 billion in the second quarter. The recent record effectively placed the Q3 sales volume as the best quarter in NFT history. Thus far this year, the NFT sales volume has topped $13.2, drawing on DappRadar’s numbers.

The bulk (about 50%) of the on-chain transactions involving NFTs in the third quarter is typically within the price range of $101-$1,000, while those in the $1,001-$10,000 bracket accounted for 20% of sales, and 17% fetched less than $100, according to NonFungible.com. This analytics platform tracks only Ethereum-based NFTs.

Crypto Revolution: First DeFi, Now NFTs

While the world is still striving to adjust to the revolutionary potentials of decentralized finance (DeFi), NFTs emerged, showcasing how blockchain technology could be used to secure the ownership of digital assets in a secure and verifiable manner. Thus far, the NFT revolution has helped brands see how they can interact with their fans worldwide. From Marvel Studios to TIME Magazine and even Dolce & Gabbana, the embrace of NFTs is cutting across both retail and institutional collectors alike.

The dominant role of Ethereum as the primary hub for NFTs is also gradually fading off as other protocols, including Solana, and Cardano to mention a few, are now also providing support for NFTs on their protocols. Despite the drawbacks in the skyrocketing pricing for NFTs, many believe the role of platforms like OpenSea will further help drive mainstream adoption.

Total NFT Sales Hit $25B in 2021

The explosion in popularity of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) topped its sales to some $25 billion in 2021, data from market tracker DappRadar showed.

Reports showed that prices of some NFTs rose at high-speed last year that speculators sometimes ‘flipped’ them for a profit within days.

Although the growth of NFTs was monumental, DappRadar also reported that there were signs of growth slowing towards the end of 2021, which raises questions about the performance of the speculative crypto asset in 2022.

NFT sales volume totalled $24.9 billion in 2021, compared to just $94.9 million in 2020, said DappRadar – a company that collects data across ten different blockchains, which are used to record who owns the NFT. DappRadar also said that wallets trading in NFTs saw a rise to about 28.6 million, up from some 545,000 in 2020.

Data providers may vary in providing estimated volumes but transactions that take place ‘off-chain’, such as major NFT art sales at auction houses, are often not captured by the data, Reuters reported.

While CryptoSlam – which also tracks multiple blockchains – reported $18.3 billion as total sales for 2021, NonFungible.com – which tracks the ethereum blockchain only – saw $15.7 billion sales in 2021.

According to the data from NFT marketplace, OpenSea, last year’s sales peaked in August, then declined in September, October and November before picking up again in December.

CryptoSlam data showed that prices of the most sought-after NFTs were highly volatile in 2021. The average sale price of a CryptoPunk image saw an increase from around $100,000 in July to nearly $500,000 in November, and by December it had fallen to around $350,000.

Although NFTs recorded an unprecedented sale volume, just 10% of traders accounted for 85% of all NFT transactions, research published in the journal Nature said.

NFTs are crypto-assets representing a digital item such as an image, video, or even land in virtual worlds. They are unique and non-interchangeable units of data stored on a blockchain – a form of the digital ledger – and are able to verify ownership of a work of digital art.

The increase in value of NFTs was a lucrative opportunity for the art world last year. Auction houses sold NFTs representing simple cartoons for millions of dollars with no physical objects changing hands. Meanwhile, some of the world’s top brands, including Coca Cola and Gucci were also quick to cash in on the hype and have already sold multiple NFTs.

“Everydays: the First 5000 Days,” the top NFT artwork sale last year fetched a record $69.3 million at a Christie’s sale in March. The artwork was created by Mike Winkelmann — the digital artist is also known as Beeple – who became the top three most valuable living artists after the sale of his work.

While Beeple’s NFT sale was the most expensive, a common price range for the sale of NFTs was $100 to $1,000 in 2021, NonFungible.com said.

Virtual real estate investor Republic Realm bought land in the virtual world The Sandbox for $4.3 million in November.

Riding on last year’s success of digital assets, 2022 is also likely going to be a positive year for crypto as the first trading week of this year has already seen cryptocurrency investment net outflows totalling a record $207 million, as reported by Blockchain.News.

After experiencing four consecutive weeks of outflows since mid-December 2021, the cryptocurrency sector reached a total of $465 million, or 0.8% of total assets under management, Blockchain.News reported.

Meanwhile, from the first week of 2022 to Jan. 7, 2022, the world’s largest cryptocurrency in terms of market capitalization, bitcoin posted outflows of $107 million, it added.

Blockchain-based Games Rallied Up 2,000% in One Year, DappRadar’s Latest Report Shows

DappRadar, a major online platform that offers information and insights about all the existing blockchain-based decentralized applications (DApps), Wednesday disclosed through its Blockchain Games Report that interest in blockchain-based games has risen by 2,000% since Q1 of 2021.

The study shows that blockchain games are leading in decentralized applications, which put them at 52% of all blockchain activities.

The report further reveals that blockchain games attracted 1.22 million unique active wallets (UAW) in March of this year. According to the report, Axie Infinity, a platform that offers decentralized games, was responsible for 22,000 such unique active wallets despite Ronin Network, a sidechain tied to Axie Infinity, being hacked that led to a loss of $615 million in stolen funds.

The study also indicated that an increase in popularity of play-to-earn (P2E) non-fungible token (NFT) games on Ethereum sidechains have been a big factor that significantly contributed to the growth of the blockchain games. As per the report, popular crypto games platforms on Polygon’s MATIC blockchain such as Crazy Defense Heroes, Pegaxy, Arc8, and Aavegotchi have spurred a 219% rise in Polygon’s gaming activities since the beginning of 2022.

Besides that, the report indicated that blockchain-based games raised $2.5 billion in Q1, 2022 from investors. If such a trend is maintained, then the total investments by the end of the year will be 150% higher than in 2021, the report said. Animoca Brands, a developer of blockchain-based video games that allow gamers to buy and sell NFTs, was among the major investors. In January, the Metaverse gaming company raised almost $360 million that giving it a valuation of$5 a billion before the addition of the new capital.

The impressive growth in the blockchain gaming sector comes amid certain challenges (such as historical hacks that have resulted in huge losses and plummeted players’ interest) witnessed in the few months.

Bringing DApps to the Mass Market

In January, DappRadar produced a similar report that showed that four out of five DeFi apps (80% of DeFi apps) could disappear if the crypto bear runs for a year.

Founded in 2018 and based in Lithuania, DappRadar provides a global app store for decentralized applications. The platform enables users to track, analyze, and discover DApps (decentralized applications). It tracks more than 3,000 DApps across 10+ blockchains, including EOS, ONT, Ethereum, EOS, and TRON, with plans to expand to others.

DappRadar is funded by some of the world’s major internet and blockchain firms including Naspers, Blockchain.com, and Angel Invest Berlin.