Jack Kubinec

This is a segment from the Lightspeed newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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The Solana-based golfing loyalty app GolfN has gone live on the App Store, Lightspeed has learned exclusively.



The mobile app combines collectibles with digital caddie features and a native GOLF token for an experience that CEO Jared Phillips described to me as “Chase rewards meets Strava meets Pokémon Go.” The app’s self-reported waitlist of over 47,000 golfers will now gain access to the latest shot at crypto consumer rewards.&nbsp;



Upon downloading GolfN, I was directed to create a free account. I then received three digital golf clubs, which enable rewards, but most rounds with my free account will only earn me non-financialized “tickets.” However, non-members earn points for their first round, and there are other free in-app ways to gain points.



To gain better access to points, which will soon become convertible to Solana-based GOLF tokens, users have to get a paid GolfN membership that runs between $15 to $1,000 per month. These memberships come with a slew of perks and will also let users accrue points that can become GOLF, which can be redeemed for things like golf gear or traded on the open market. GolfN will also circulate partly via “rentals” of virtual golf club collectibles.



When I asked Phillips how the economics of such a scheme can work, he said he expects golfers to be willing to shell out a monthly fee to be rewarded for the money they put into golf, similarly to how membership-based credit cards work. For GolfN’s golf industry partners, the app can offer more finely-tuned customer data, Phillips said.



As for the users themselves, Phillips estimated GolfN will have a 10:1 ratio of non-crypto to crypto people since the app is built for golfers more than for crypto-natives. Nevertheless, Phillips argued that “not everyone in crypto golfs, but everyone in crypto is golf-adjacent.”



“The average person in crypto is more highly educated than not — usually bachelor’s degree —&nbsp; generally makes more money, and has more disposable income,” Phillips said, noting that a number of crypto people have “come out of the woodwork” as golfers while he’s been building the app.



Golf and crypto’s demographic overlap has made the sport a target for crypto experimentation in the past, particularly with LinksDAO — a group that <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/01/03/linksdao-nft-sale-books-first-10m-toward-buying-an-actual-golf-course">raised</a> $10 million in a 2022 NFT sale with the promise of buying a golf course. It actually went on to do so, <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/web3/2023/08/03/linksdao-the-online-community-that-bought-a-golf-course-is-accepting-new-members">acquiring</a> Spey Bay Golf Club in Scotland in 2023 and gating club membership with the NFTs. LinksDAO has <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2025/02/12/linksdao-plans-to-launch-a-community-token-on-base">become</a> part owner of a second course in Kansas City.



GolfN boasts a lot of potential demand. But if the app has an Achilles’ heel, it may be its complexity. Even as someone who writes about crypto full-time, my head spun for a few minutes trying to grok the distinctions between GOLF, points, tickets, digital clubs and digital golf balls. We’ll see if the golfers fare better.



Updated 6/12/25 at 9:05 a.m.: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that GolfN memberships start at $50 per month, rather than $15. Article has also been updated to note that non-members can earn GolfN points.



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crypto apps

Solana-based golf rewards app GolfN hits App Store

Kate Irwin

This is a segment from The Drop newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/thedrop" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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The foundation behind The Open Network (TON), which <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ton-telegram-relationship">uses Telegram</a> but operates independently from it, has hired a new head of growth. Martin Masser is now trying to bring more awareness to the chain that saw a “tap-to-earn” run last year.



He told me in an interview that even in crypto circles, most know what Telegram is, but far fewer know about TON. Masser’s focused on expanding TON’s presence and awareness in the US and Europe. US residents can’t yet use TON Space (a self-custodial browser wallet inside Telegram), but Masser confirmed expanding TON Space to the US is part of the plan. That said, no live date for US access has yet been announced.



“I love the American market, especially. There’s so much that comes out of America, a lot of the narratives as well. We haven’t even had that to touch,” Masser said, adding: “I love going to America. There’s an energy. There’s a buzz, you know.”



Masser hopes that US builders will increasingly look to TON and Telegram as viable options for crypto projects like games, payments and remittance tools, DeFi miniapps, and other apps within the app that provide just about any service you could think of.&nbsp;



“My role as head of growth isn’t to give narratives. I don’t want to tell people you have to do stickers, you have to do gifts, you have to do DeFi, you have to do all of this stuff. I do see foundations try to do that, try and force this narrative,” Masser said.&nbsp;



“I love the fact, because people use Telegram, they have their ideas already, and then you’re giving them a lot more tools. I want to be there a) to support them, give them feedback, and also connect, because there’s lots of teams I’m already now connecting,” he added. “You can add so many more things.”



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TON Foundation’s new head of growth pushes for US expansion

Jeff Albus

This is a segment from the Lightspeed newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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If you want to build in Web3, you&#8217;ve pretty much always needed to know how to code. Not necessarily at an elite level, but at least a baseline understanding. That plus lots of late nights, semicolon-heavy syntax, compiler errors, and a burly stack of ever-open documentation tabs.



The technical barrier was part of the “chewing glass” culture.



Gatekeeping, maybe, but also a necessary filter in an ecosystem where one misplaced line in a smart contract could drain a treasury.&nbsp;



That filter is eroding fast these days, however.



Brace yourselves, friends. We&#8217;ve now entered the era of vibe coding. The term, coined by computer scientist Andrej Karpathy, refers to a novel AI-native coding style where developers (and perhaps more importantly, non-developers) describe what they want and, at the click of a button, an LLM generates a working iteration of their request.



Tools like Cursor, Dev.fun and Poof.new are already lowering the floor, turning ideas into dApps with a few lines of stumbling prose. A Poof co-founder told Lightspeed that vibe coders have created over 2,000 apps on the platform since its open beta started on Thursday.



But, of course, there&#8217;s a dark side to every moon. Because if it&#8217;s easier than ever to build something legitimate, it&#8217;s also easier than ever to build something that only has the appearance of legitimacy.



The ICO boom of 2017 gave us a glimpse of this dynamic. Once the profit motive was clear, hundreds of anonymous teams emerged from the woodwork to spin up faux white papers and (usually crap) landing pages. They promised revolutionary tech, launched tokens, raised millions&#8230;and vanished into vapor.



Now imagine that, but times infinity. 



Imagine some clown throwing up an LLM-generated codebase, a slick AI-generated branding package, wholly-believable GitHub activity, a world-class website UI with Web3 login, and then getting his fake chatbot founders to do some live AMAs.



Honeypot contracts with backdoors phishing sites that buoy authentic functionality as an indicator of legitimacy…Mint buttons that seed approvals you don&#8217;t notice ‘til your wallet is drained…The potential for bad actors runs deep.



Once things really get going, reputation systems and persistent identities will likely be the only hope we have of ever trusting another product. Proof-of-humanity systems, social graphs and third-party attestations will form the backbone of trust in an AI-coded world in Web3 and beyond.



We&#8217;ll need open auditing tools built for non-coders, and sandbox environments that simulate contract behavior before anything hits mainnet. Smart contract registries could begin to mirror app store models, with verified publishers, community ratings, and AI-generated trust scores.



The responsibility won&#8217;t just fall on users — it&#8217;ll sit with platforms, protocols, and indeed, the vibe coders themselves.



But even with those risks, even with the inevitable rough edges, something big is happening here. We&#8217;ve spent years saying Web3 is about empowering creators. Now it actually can be. Not just for the technically-minded or the crypto-native.



The poet, the game designer, the high school kid with a better idea for an auction format or voting platform — they can actually build. And if we establish proper protection early enough, the best ideas may finally have a chance to win. Not because they raise the most capital but because they exist — functional, forkable, live.



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The rise of vibe coding on Solana

Tools for Humanity, the for-profit firm behind Sam Altman’s crypto-powered <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/world-id-verification-gaming">World Network</a>, has updated its “Mini Apps” with Mini Apps 1.2. The company is also launching a $300,000 Developer Rewards pilot program, Tools for Humanity exclusively shared with Blockworks.



Mini Apps version 1.2 makes mini apps load faster within the <a href="https://apps.apple.com/no/app/world-app-worldcoin-wallet/id1560859847">World mobile app</a>, adds haptic feedback, enables customization, and allows you to pin your favorite mini apps to your phone’s home screen without needing to open the Worldcoin Wallet app, according to the company. Mini apps will also be accessible through the search bar on iOS. The app is currently available in 30 countries, including the US.&nbsp;



World now supports more than 150 mini apps, according to data provided to Blockworks. The vast majority of those are from third-party developers.



Tools for Humanity’s Developer Reward pilot program starts April 1, letting devs earn from a pool of $300,000 worth of Worldcoin or WLD to develop and update a mini app.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="946" height="596" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AD_4nXdbMvdy1_3U3xcpFRiL2lhBn4xS11OpOf7orM8IKAIgT6kLN6AiHyRUfZBjTrz6weicqP4-6AArroUFbJc1yHlD2Tmu9czgGz77b5l_LvxZEpHv7CVgyvYJhOmhyyVtowmLJBPZIA.png" alt="" class="wp-image-99653" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AD_4nXdbMvdy1_3U3xcpFRiL2lhBn4xS11OpOf7orM8IKAIgT6kLN6AiHyRUfZBjTrz6weicqP4-6AArroUFbJc1yHlD2Tmu9czgGz77b5l_LvxZEpHv7CVgyvYJhOmhyyVtowmLJBPZIA.png?w=946 946w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AD_4nXdbMvdy1_3U3xcpFRiL2lhBn4xS11OpOf7orM8IKAIgT6kLN6AiHyRUfZBjTrz6weicqP4-6AArroUFbJc1yHlD2Tmu9czgGz77b5l_LvxZEpHv7CVgyvYJhOmhyyVtowmLJBPZIA.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AD_4nXdbMvdy1_3U3xcpFRiL2lhBn4xS11OpOf7orM8IKAIgT6kLN6AiHyRUfZBjTrz6weicqP4-6AArroUFbJc1yHlD2Tmu9czgGz77b5l_LvxZEpHv7CVgyvYJhOmhyyVtowmLJBPZIA.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AD_4nXdbMvdy1_3U3xcpFRiL2lhBn4xS11OpOf7orM8IKAIgT6kLN6AiHyRUfZBjTrz6weicqP4-6AArroUFbJc1yHlD2Tmu9czgGz77b5l_LvxZEpHv7CVgyvYJhOmhyyVtowmLJBPZIA.png?w=408 408w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AD_4nXdbMvdy1_3U3xcpFRiL2lhBn4xS11OpOf7orM8IKAIgT6kLN6AiHyRUfZBjTrz6weicqP4-6AArroUFbJc1yHlD2Tmu9czgGz77b5l_LvxZEpHv7CVgyvYJhOmhyyVtowmLJBPZIA.png?w=414 414w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AD_4nXdbMvdy1_3U3xcpFRiL2lhBn4xS11OpOf7orM8IKAIgT6kLN6AiHyRUfZBjTrz6weicqP4-6AArroUFbJc1yHlD2Tmu9czgGz77b5l_LvxZEpHv7CVgyvYJhOmhyyVtowmLJBPZIA.png?w=348 348w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AD_4nXdbMvdy1_3U3xcpFRiL2lhBn4xS11OpOf7orM8IKAIgT6kLN6AiHyRUfZBjTrz6weicqP4-6AArroUFbJc1yHlD2Tmu9czgGz77b5l_LvxZEpHv7CVgyvYJhOmhyyVtowmLJBPZIA.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 946px) 100vw, 946px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">WLD price over time, from Blockworks Research</figcaption></figure>



Devs can earn up to $25,000 a week in Worldcoin if they’re building a top-performing app, Tools for Humanity Chief Product Officer Tiago Sada told Blockworks.&nbsp;



Rewards will be distributed based on the number of World ID-verified users engaging with each mini app.&nbsp;



“Games have been popular,” Sada said of what’s been trending within the World ecosystem. AI apps/assistants, finance apps, lending apps, airdrop apps, payment apps that let you pay with WLD, and eSIM apps have also been gaining traction. They can be used with stablecoins or WLD, and transactions take place on World’s Ethereum L2, World Chain.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1044" height="756" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AD_4nXcQqzd0aH98OB9UkKBiKGEfzrBG8d-7-GYXe_gh9twrdl5xxxLcnMAjPuLg8Varc1IyR62u-0mvKfMhDLNsS-hK9Y2kq76rL4T6ulkaafA3RhAGkygMJCJvTkKfETb2kibCEgXW.png" alt="" class="wp-image-99652" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AD_4nXcQqzd0aH98OB9UkKBiKGEfzrBG8d-7-GYXe_gh9twrdl5xxxLcnMAjPuLg8Varc1IyR62u-0mvKfMhDLNsS-hK9Y2kq76rL4T6ulkaafA3RhAGkygMJCJvTkKfETb2kibCEgXW.png?w=1044 1044w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AD_4nXcQqzd0aH98OB9UkKBiKGEfzrBG8d-7-GYXe_gh9twrdl5xxxLcnMAjPuLg8Varc1IyR62u-0mvKfMhDLNsS-hK9Y2kq76rL4T6ulkaafA3RhAGkygMJCJvTkKfETb2kibCEgXW.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AD_4nXcQqzd0aH98OB9UkKBiKGEfzrBG8d-7-GYXe_gh9twrdl5xxxLcnMAjPuLg8Varc1IyR62u-0mvKfMhDLNsS-hK9Y2kq76rL4T6ulkaafA3RhAGkygMJCJvTkKfETb2kibCEgXW.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AD_4nXcQqzd0aH98OB9UkKBiKGEfzrBG8d-7-GYXe_gh9twrdl5xxxLcnMAjPuLg8Varc1IyR62u-0mvKfMhDLNsS-hK9Y2kq76rL4T6ulkaafA3RhAGkygMJCJvTkKfETb2kibCEgXW.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AD_4nXcQqzd0aH98OB9UkKBiKGEfzrBG8d-7-GYXe_gh9twrdl5xxxLcnMAjPuLg8Varc1IyR62u-0mvKfMhDLNsS-hK9Y2kq76rL4T6ulkaafA3RhAGkygMJCJvTkKfETb2kibCEgXW.png?w=355 355w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AD_4nXcQqzd0aH98OB9UkKBiKGEfzrBG8d-7-GYXe_gh9twrdl5xxxLcnMAjPuLg8Varc1IyR62u-0mvKfMhDLNsS-hK9Y2kq76rL4T6ulkaafA3RhAGkygMJCJvTkKfETb2kibCEgXW.png?w=360 360w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AD_4nXcQqzd0aH98OB9UkKBiKGEfzrBG8d-7-GYXe_gh9twrdl5xxxLcnMAjPuLg8Varc1IyR62u-0mvKfMhDLNsS-hK9Y2kq76rL4T6ulkaafA3RhAGkygMJCJvTkKfETb2kibCEgXW.png?w=302 302w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AD_4nXcQqzd0aH98OB9UkKBiKGEfzrBG8d-7-GYXe_gh9twrdl5xxxLcnMAjPuLg8Varc1IyR62u-0mvKfMhDLNsS-hK9Y2kq76rL4T6ulkaafA3RhAGkygMJCJvTkKfETb2kibCEgXW.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1044px) 100vw, 1044px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Transactions on World Chain, per World</figcaption></figure>



Sada said many of these mini apps are rewarding users as well, as opposed to extracting funds from them. User monetization will come eventually, but that’s not the focus right now.



Concepts like play-to-earn, tap-to-earn and move-to-earn have been challenging to balance over time, with token prices often crashing as earners cash out (like Pegaxy’s PGX, Notcoin, or Stepn’s GMT).



“It was really difficult to have a sustainable system,” Sada said, adding that now we’re seeing the emergence instead of apps “that are able to reward users for actions that are actually valuable for something, and developers can pay for that because it’s not going to be gamed.”



For now, the transactions side of things can be a bit tricky because of Apple and Google’s app store rules. Apple’s rules on mini apps, for example, state that in-app purchases are required for “digital goods or services to end users.”



“All the transactions that we support in mini apps go directly to developers. There’s some kinds of transactions — for example, buying an NFT — that would require in-app purchases. We do not currently support in-app purchases on mini apps,” Sada explained.&nbsp;



But he said transactions such as buying a plane ticket or an eSIM card with a credit card within a mini app wouldn’t incur the so-called “Apple tax” within the World app.



The main appeal of World right now over Telegram or X/Twitter is that it’s easier to tell who is — and isn’t — a bot. Telegram can also feel a bit overwhelming if you’re new to that world, and X is a sea of politics, memes, bots and chaos these days.



When I asked Sada for his thoughts on competitors like Telegram embracing bots across its app, he said: “I think chatbots and AI are awesome. You just want to know what is what.”



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Sam Altman’s World launches Mini Apps 1.2, lets devs build-to-earn

Darren Kleine

The “freemium” model — where basic app features are free but users unlock more features with payments — has been enormously successful in the Web2 world for years.



Even so, most freemium apps only convert between <a href="https://www.toplyne.io/blog/everything-you-need-to-know-about-freemium-conversion-rates-benchmarks-tips-more">2-5%</a> of users into paying customers, with the rest of the crowd keeping their credit cards tucked neatly in their wallets. Essentially, Web2 apps find a “product market fit” and gather up a massive user base first, figuring out the money side of the equation after everybody has arrived on the scene.



<a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/web3">Web3</a> apps often take the opposite approach, starting with monetization as the first step. This makes the barrier to entry considerably more significant, but once users get over the monetary hump, the average revenue per user can be far greater than the legacy model.



On the Lightspeed podcast (<a href="https://open.spotify.com/episode/3LA6bXABFoLh1938zoQM0a?si=pYSXIWdNTQWhn0poCxyE2A">Spotify</a>/<a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-art-of-building-products-users-love-jeff-morris-jr/id1697548240?i=1000626315371">Apple</a>), Jeff Morris Jr. explains that both strategies have their advantages, but the Web3 “financialized use case” approach tends to be misunderstood. He helped Tinder become the top grossing app in the App Store, ballooning the Web2 app’s annual recurring revenue (ARR) from $20 million to $1.2 billion during his tenure with the company.



The former VP of product and revenue at Tinder gained some key insights from his successes before joining the Web3 world as a managing partner at Chapter One. “In Web2,” he says, “the goal was always to build the biggest network possible and then figure out how to monetize them later.”



“The benefit of Web3 is — everything is very monetizable. It&#8217;s one of the reasons why I actually think the space is really interesting as an investor,” he says. “If you have a small subset of users that are active traders, there are very easy ways to build a business.”



Morris cites <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/uniswap">Uniswap</a> trading volume in Q2 of 2022 as an example of his thought process. “Monthly trading volume was over $170 billion with 400,000 monthly traders.”



“I compare that to <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/coinbase">Coinbase</a>, which had a little over $200 billion of volume with 9 million monthly traders,” he says. The centralized trading application hosted 9 million users while the decentralized version — Uniswap — only hosted 400,000, “with almost equal trading volume,” he says.



“You could argue that those both have product market fit,” he says, “but if you were to go on a public road show and try to take Uniswap public as a company and explain the fact that you had 400,000 users…they&#8217;d be like, ‘this isn&#8217;t an interesting business.’”



“But it&#8217;s clearly an interesting business,” he says.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Reaching a billion users is the wrong goal</h2>



Morris says the common crypto trope that centers on <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/base-next-internet-jesse-pollak">reaching “a billion users”</a> is probably the wrong goal. “If we had 30 million people who were really passionate about crypto and found value in the ecosystem, that would be enough to build a multi-trillion dollar asset class that was great for founders and investors and LPs.”



Morris says that some people have criticized his perspective as giving Web3 builders “an easy path” — claiming they have achieved product market fit despite low user numbers — but he prefers to focus on the positives he sees in Web3.&nbsp;



“I spend a lot of my time looking for signals of positivity or hope, because I think it&#8217;s really important in a bear market to say things aren&#8217;t as bad as everybody thinks.”



But crypto applications still need to be more accessible, Morris says. Citing <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/friend-tech-financialization-goldentre">Friend.tech</a> as an example of what might be considered by Web3 users to be an “accessible” mobile experience, Morris asks what a non-crypto user would think of the app’s onboarding process.



<iframe loading="lazy" frameborder="0" height="200" scrolling="no" src="https://playlist.megaphone.fm/?e=BWG7940615946" width="100%"></iframe>







“I would love to look at the completion rate because most people just aren&#8217;t going to go through this kind of <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/friend-tech-momentum-stalls">janky web experience</a>,” he says.



“Crypto right now still feels like it&#8217;s in 2007 or 2008 relative to where the rest of consumer experiences are. And so yeah, we have a long way to go.”



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Reaching a billion users is ‘the wrong goal’ for crypto, says former Tinder VP

Blockchain products are often described as solutions looking for problems. The question springs up from time to time in the community — when will crypto get the “killer apps” that finally drive it into the mainstream?



It turns out that the apps are already here, says Empire podcast guest Mike Ippolito, in the form of <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-future-change">non-sovereign money</a> and permissionless application building, which are “already hundred billion dollar outcomes,” he says.



On the Empire podcast (<a href="https://open.spotify.com/episode/6dRTiJQczjTL78Cdxf1r9V?si=J-m4FaGJSxOiSFJcHCZm5Q&amp;nd=1">Spotify</a>/<a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-blockworks-origin-story-michael-jason/id1554930038?i=1000623848167">Apple</a>), Ippolito says, “we’re already looking at a lot of the major use cases” for crypto. “You just need to be patient and wait, that people will eventually use these things. And I believe they will. I&#8217;m really optimistic about that.”



Host Jason Yanowitz adds that <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/defi">DeFi</a> is already a killer app, but that the use case is often misunderstood as a B2C (business to consumer) system. It behaves more like a B2B, he says, where commerce primarily takes place between businesses instead of flowing to retail consumers.



“DeFi has a dozen protocols that spit off a bunch of cash flow,” he says. “They&#8217;re sustainable. They&#8217;ve got massive businesses on top of them and funds that sit on top of them.” It’s already, Yanowitz says, an “interoperable ecosystem.”



Host Santiago Santos mentions <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/stablecoins">stablecoins</a> as another strong use case. He sees <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/coinbase">Coinbase</a> with its <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/coinbase-base-home-degens">recently launched layer-2 protocol Base</a> and app integration with the USD stablecoin (USDC) as a potential “everything app.”&nbsp;



“The whole vision of Base makes me incredibly excited as a catalyst with account abstraction, with USDC as that conduit,” he says, noting that in a recent discussion with Coinbase protocols lead Jesse Pollak, “You could see the vision.”



“Restaurants issue an <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/nfts">NFT</a>, that&#8217;s your loyalty. You get points and you pay with <a href="https://blockworks.co/price/usdc">USDC</a> — you don&#8217;t even whip out Apple Pay, none of that jazz — everything just works.”&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Third party innovation as the catalyst</h2>



People had ideas for what would ultimately work on the internet long before it was technically feasible at scale, <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/framework-ventures">Framework Ventures</a> co-founder Michael Anderson says.&nbsp;



“It took catalyzing events for those things to become real,” he says, “like SSL to make e-commerce actually work and the ability to take digital photos and upload them to make social media actually work.”



Anderson expects “third party events” to “make all these things real,” admitting, “it&#8217;s really hard to predict what those events will be.”



<iframe loading="lazy" frameborder="0" height="200" scrolling="no" src="https://playlist.megaphone.fm/?e=BWG6902703395" width="100%"></iframe>







Ippolito points to the <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/solana">Solana</a> ecosystem as a community that “gets this.”



“You can squint at <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/drive-to-earn-app-dynamic-maps-crypto-rewards">DePIN (decentralized physical infrastructure networks)</a>, and see how this space might end up evolving,” he says. “Stuff that takes place on crypto actually leverages hardware and might eventually influence hardware and then actions that people take in real life,” he says.&nbsp;



“It&#8217;s clearly not where it ultimately needs to be, but I think you can squint at that and see a very attractive future for crypto.”



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The killer apps are already here. Crypto just needs to mature

John Gilbert

People searched “bitcoin price” some 7.5 million times a month in 2022 — more than double the 3.4 million monthly estimate for “bitcoin” alone.&nbsp;



As crypto traders spent the last 12 months checking (or were unable to turn away from) the typically plummeting price of their digital assets, Cloudflare Radar tracked their behavior.&nbsp;



The firm found that eight of the top 10 crypto services visited in 2022 were either data pricing tools or exchanges. The only exceptions were NiceHash, a platform for buying and selling shares of the hash power behind bitcoin mining, and Etherscan, an Ethereum data-driven blockchain explorer.



Should the overwhelming obsession with price be a concern for crypto?&nbsp;



Industry critics say it’s yet more evidence that the asset class is all but a speculative bubble. The question, though, is really a debate of degrees. 



Every revolution in technology, like the rise of the internet, comes with a cycle of hype and speculation. The difference between the revolutions that succeed and fail is in the ratio of speculative to real demand. A closer look at Cloudflare’s data and adoption trends reveals that the demand behind these services goes beyond compulsive habit.&nbsp;



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">The most popular crypto services of 2022:</h3>



<ol class="wp-block-list">
<li>Binance</li>



<li>Coingecko</li>



<li>Coinbase</li>



<li>NiceHash</li>



<li>CoinMarketCap</li>



<li>OKX</li>



<li>Etherscan</li>



<li>Crypto.com</li>



<li>MEXC</li>



<li>Kucoin</li>
</ol>



Source: <a href="https://blog.cloudflare.com/radar-2022-year-in-review/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Cloudflare</a>



This ranking saw only one major— and unsurprising — disruption on the year. In November, FTX fell from the seventh spot to 21st place following its bankruptcy declaration. Rivals Binance and Coinbase did not lose any ground. Despite the shock, awe and, yes, headlines proclaiming the death of exchanges, they remained mostly dominant.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Binance and Coingecko, in fact, both made it into the top 10 ranking of financial services:



<ol class="wp-block-list">
<li>PayPal</li>



<li>Stripe</li>



<li>Alipay</li>



<li>TradingView</li>



<li>Google Pay</li>



<li>Binance</li>



<li>Intuit</li>



<li>Chase</li>
</ol>



Spots nine and 10 were considered a tie by Coingecko, with American Express, Bank of America Merrill Lynch and CompareCards jostling for those positions throughout November. 



Source: <a href="https://blog.cloudflare.com/radar-2022-year-in-review/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Cloudflare</a>&nbsp;



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Crypto adoption trends for 2022</h3>



Industry setbacks have not come close to erasing a decade of crypto adoption progress. Global adoption remains well above its pre-bull market 2019 levels, according to <a href="https://blog.chainalysis.com/reports/2022-global-crypto-adoption-index/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Chainalysis</a>.



Case in point: When bitcoin dropped to $20,000 (72% off its all-time high of $69,000) in the second quarter of 2022, the adoption index only slightly decreased, from 51% to 50% from its peak.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/WZ2KUEX7jjC_SMPI8uPuqdzV6km3XyHes9qQO5KFSe8TU6K79XE7otL_zIei-k4Milum2NQU-mp-QngpnTx2AxoOykt6moyLgLPcvANvzkyTKm051SLGmKZXKnImHolZnjGbJFURqOcQxTo_OEj8t6BrOlqZzWK2zyxcw43BgQNwcrVj9Zj5AIRnkI-VPQ" alt="Bitcoin's global adoption trend from 2019 to 2022"/></figure>



The rise of crypto adoption among emerging nations has been a driving force behind this resilience. The economies of 10 of the top 20 countries in <a href="https://blog.chainalysis.com/reports/2022-global-crypto-adoption-index/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Chainalysis</a>’ 2022 adoption ranking were dubbed “lower middle income,” the third lowest of four such designations (Indonesia, India, Kenya, Morocco, Nepal, Nigeria, Pakistan, The Philippines, Ukraine and Vietnam).



Only two were considered “high income” (US and The United Kingdom), and the remaining eight were categorized as “upper middle income” (Argentina, Brazil, China, Colombia, Ecuador, Russia, Thailand and Turkey).



Turkey booked record high inflation of 83% in 2022. Other countries in a similar position turned to cryptocurrencies to preserve purchasing power. According to SimilarWeb, Turkey was the top country sending desktop traffic to binance.com in November 2022.&nbsp;



And, in a recent <a href="https://wpdevshed.com/binance-statistics/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">survey</a>, 38% of Binance users cited a lack of confidence in their country’s existing currency and financial system as one of the main reasons for using the exchange.&nbsp;



This need to escape poor monetary policy may, in part, explain Binance’s user growth in 2022. The crypto exchange’s active monthly users <a href="https://www.binance.com/en/blog/futures/binance-futures-quarterly-report-q2-2022-5670445909238579513" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">increased</a> from 28 million in 2021 to 29 million in the second quarter of 2022.&nbsp;



That may seem minor, but it is nonetheless impressive, considering that the bear market has not been kind to retail-focused stock trading apps like Robinhood. The broker’s active users <a href="https://investors.robinhood.com/news/news-details/2022/Robinhood-Reports-Second-Quarter-2022-Results/default.aspx" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">decreased</a> from 22.5 million in 2021 to 14 million in the second quarter of 2022.&nbsp;



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Decentralization on the rise</h3>



Even though all featured exchanges are centralized, decentralized solutions, including DEXs, notched exponential growth following the FTX bankruptcy. <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/leeorshimron/2022/11/23/dexs-gain-market-share-as-faith-in-centralized-crypto-players-erodes/?sh=be840943f40b" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Trading volume</a> at decentralized exchanges (DEXs) reached $91 billion in November, a 79% month-over-month pop.&nbsp;



Consider that Uniswap on Nov. 14 booked more ether (ETH) trading volume than all other centralized exchanges, save Binance.



November was also a big month for decentralized social media platform Mastodon, whose active monthly users exploded from 300,000 to <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2022/12/20/23518325/mastodon-monthly-active-users-twitter-elon-musk" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">2.5 million</a>. Cloudflare&#8217;s rankings for popular internet services placed Mastodon at #200 in January, but it gradually improved throughout the year until reaching a turning point in November, climbing from #190 to #140.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/oH1pqOqMkPuDabX8Oj33RrBpHoE8ND0W2m0691Sxve7ZQx3qOQzlpx-yHzdgwwQ6AQAQ1iUaCNlzpscnbG89avC_BF3FSheU0i7xlIk8lWroZ1R_hW6kTQBUnm6_8UP2GxXFx9pKphqeMWzTi_tGUHxoOhqCrSxwTTp2ynWw0i7gD1ZTkZGh1fp4T60SGA" alt="Mastadon has rapidly gained market share from its centralized social media rivals "/></figure>



The timing of that growth corresponds to the time Elon Musk acquired Twitter. Some have speculated that the influx in users are from people protesting the new management and content policy standards.&nbsp;



The increase in popularity may also represent a larger trend toward more niche, independent online communities. This trend is represented in the rise in popularity of Facebook groups. They make up a majority of the platform&#8217;s user activity. In 2021, Facebook reported 1.8 billion people use its groups. And 77% of those surveyed said the most important group they belong to is online.&nbsp;



Mastodon is similar to Facebook groups in that users can create their own profiles, post and interact with one another — and join communities centered around specific topics or interests. But, unlike the tech giant, it is made up of a network of independent servers, or &#8220;instances,&#8221; that are run by individual users or organizations.



Each Mastodon instance is governed by its own administrator and has its own set of rules and policies, which can and do vary.&nbsp;



The decentralized and permissionless nature of the platform are not features that attract users wanting to protest the lack of content moderation on Twitter. These users could have easily chosen a centralized alternative like Discord, instead.&nbsp;



Discord, however, did <a href="https://pro.similarweb.com/#/digitalsuite/companyresearch/appanalysis/performance/0_com.discord/999/1m/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">not see a spike in users during</a> Musk’s acquisition of Twitter in December. The number of downloads <a href="https://pro.similarweb.com/#/digitalsuite/companyresearch/appanalysis/performance/0_com.discord/999/1m/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">decreased 5.79%</a> from October to November, and the number of <a href="https://pro.similarweb.com/#/digitalsuite/companyresearch/appanalysis/performance/0_com.discord/999/1m/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">daily users dropped 0.05%</a>.



Mastodon’s rise is better explained by the fact that it is meeting a specific market demand — one for an open source and decentralized version of Discord and Facebook groups. And while the platform has nothing to do with blockchain or crypto, it demonstrates there is ample opportunity for Web3 social platforms to grab market share.&nbsp;



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">The state of crypto apps&nbsp;</h3>



For all of crypto’s 2022 changes, some things have stayed the same.&nbsp;



Crypto’s adherents are still conditioned to chase euphoric highs. Decentralized application (dapp) and app developers alike are still tempted by that compulsive instinct to bake recursive and speculative tokenomics into their projects.&nbsp;



But the growth of Mastodon, DEXs, and cryptocurrencies abroad proves it’s no longer needed — if it ever was.&nbsp;



There is a real and growing hunger for genuine decentralization. The next generation of blockchain applications are poised to find new ways to rebrand the embattled industry — and maybe even shake the long running addiction to “number go up.”



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