DApp Market 2022 Review: Activity Steady, Social Media Category Sees Significant Rise

In 2022, influenced by the overall market environment, the development of DApps tended to stabilize. Aside from the M2E craze that emerged at the beginning of the year, storage and social media DApps also received attention, but have not yet formed a driving force for a qualitative change in the industry. This article will review the development of DApps over the past year from multiple dimensions.

Main Findings

1. The types of DApps on BNB Chain and Ethereum are the most diverse, while other public chain ecosystems are relatively homogeneous. NFT collectible applications on Ethereum have surpassed DeFi to become dominant, accounting for about 50% of the total.

2. The estimated total number of active addresses per year across 4464 active DApps on 8 major public chains is approximately 113 million. Among them, BNB Chain users are the most active, followed by Polygon, Ethereum, and Optimism.

3. The active addresses of leading social media applications show a rise trend, with the cumulative active addresses from January to December increasing by 1583.75%. Other categories of DApps saw a decline between 50% and 80%.

4. The trading volume of leading social media applications is also on the rise, with a cumulative increase of 715.26% from January to December. The gaming category decreased by 17.47%, which is a smaller decline.

5. The top 20 DApps have an average monthly total revenue of approximately $152 million, showing a significant downward trend throughout the year. The total revenue in January was $515 million, dropping to $24 million in December, with an annual decline of 95.34%. The average annual total revenue is approximately $83 million.

DApp Ecosystem Overview

The BNB Chain has surpassed Ethereum to become the public chain with the most active DApps, totaling 1779 active DApps. Among them, DeFi is the dominant type, with 709, accounting for about 40%. High-risk and gaming types are also major categories, with 456 and 346 respectively.

There are 1,259 active DApps on Ethereum. NFT collectibles have surpassed DeFi to become the dominant category, with 625, accounting for about 50%. DeFi and gaming follow, with 304 and 160, respectively.

The DApp ecosystem on other public chains is relatively singular. For example, among the 887 active DApps on Polygon, 442 are DeFi type, accounting for 50%, and 162 are game type, accounting for 18%. Among the 197 active DApps on Avalanche, 106 are DeFi type, accounting for 54%. There are fewer active DApps on TRON, EOS, Optimism, and Solana, mainly focusing on DeFi.

User Activity Analysis

According to the estimated daily average active addresses of each DApp over the last 30 days, the total annual active addresses for 4,464 active DApps across 8 public chains is approximately 113 million. BNB Chain users are the most active, with an estimated total of 53.02 million annual active addresses for 1,779 DApps. Polygon comes in second, with an estimated total of 24.65 million annual active addresses for 887 DApps. Both Ethereum and Optimism also exceed 10 million.

The median number of annual active addresses for a single DApp is highest for Solana, approximately 1782, followed by Optimism, approximately 1387. Other public chains are generally between 100 and 300.

Among the top 50 DApps by activity, BNB Chain and Polygon performed the best, with a median of approximately 155,100 and 143,600 active addresses per DApp annually, respectively. Ethereum follows with about 65,900. Other public chains mostly have between 5,000 and 7,000.

Performance of Different Types of DApps

From a multi-chain perspective, the trading market and top DeFi DApps have a high degree of multi-chain implementation, with 6-7 having laid out on more than 2 public chains, and 4-5 having implemented more than 5. In the gaming category, 5 have achieved dual-chain layouts. The degree of multi-chain implementation is relatively low for NFT collectibles and social media.

From the perspective of user scale, the total number of active addresses for the top 50 DApps across 5 categories is about 455 million for the whole year. The gaming category is the highest, reaching 245 million. DeFi comes next, with 114 million. The NFT collectibles category is the lowest, with only 5.67 million.

The number of active addresses in social media categories shows a rising trend, with the cumulative active addresses from January to December increasing from 400,000 to 6,680,000, a rise of 1583.75%. Other categories saw a decline between 50% and 80%.

In terms of transaction volume, the gaming category accounted for approximately 7.14 billion transactions throughout the year, representing 86% of the total. The trading market category followed with about 777 million transactions. NFT collectibles and social media categories were much lower, with only 30.26 million and 56.82 million transactions, respectively.

The number of transactions in social media has also seen a rise, increasing from 1.5549 million to 12.6763 million from January to December, a growth of 715.26%. The decline in the gaming category is relatively small, at 17.47%. The NFT collectibles category has the largest decline, exceeding 84%.

In terms of transaction amounts, DeFi accounts for about $2.19 trillion, representing 99% of the total. The social media category is the lowest, at only around $6 million.

Development and Revenue Situation

The average total number of developers for the 15 major DApps is about 437 per month, higher in the first half of the year than in the second half. Development activity was relatively high in March, April, and June, exceeding 480 people each month. October and December were lower, with fewer than 400 people.

The average number of developers per DApp is about 29 people per month. Chainlink is the highest, reaching 75 people. MakerDAO, The Graph, and yearn.Finance are also relatively high, exceeding 30 people.

The monthly total revenue of the 20 major DApps is approximately $152 million, showing a downward trend throughout the year. In January, it reached as high as $515 million, dropping to $24 million in December, a decrease of 95.34%. After June, the monthly total revenue has consistently been below $70 million.

LooksRare and Opensea had the highest annual total revenue, reaching 552 million USD and 450 million USD respectively. dYdX and PancakeSwap exceeded 100 million USD. The average annual total revenue of 20 DApps was approximately 83 million USD, with a median of 35 million USD.

Overall, although the activity level of the DApp market in 2022 has declined, it still maintains a certain scale. Social media applications performed well, while NFT collectibles were greatly affected by the market. In the future, DApp development still needs to focus on user needs and improve application experience.