Social Dapp Ecosystem Trends: 2020 Flash Report
Tags: Blockchain Technology, Data Visualization, Dapps, Social Media, Decentralized Apps

Social category drives 609% growth on the Hive Blockchain

Social media applications have been growing rapidly over the last ten years due to an increase in overall access. The blockchain also has social apps or dapps. They help users to interact in the same way as when using centralized social apps such as Twitter, Youtube, or Instagram.

The main difference is that when using social dapps such as Steemit or DTube for example, users build a revenue stream by contributing to high-quality content on the platform. As such, social dapps look to grow their audience and social economy by rewarding the community.

Blockchain wars

Justin Sun, founder of the TRON blockchain recently acquired Steemit and the token associated with it. The idea of acquiring Steemit was to strengthen the TRON blockchain and its TRX cryptocurrency, which many described as an unwanted and hostile takeover. After this incident, the Steem community announced its intention to create a new platform in the wake of this controversy.

A new platform called Hive was established and launched on March 20th, 2020. The majority of the dapps running on Steem also announced their intentions to migrate over to Hive, in some cases with different names.

Hive contributed 60% of the total daily active users observed in the social category as tracked by DappRadar in May 2020. 3 of the top 5 dapps are based on the Hive protocol.

It is in this context that we present our 2020 overview of the social dapp category on DappRadar.

Key takeaways

Daily active users grew by 60% in the social category in May across all protocols when compared to January 2020

Steemit is losing its leadership position in the social dapp category with a decrease of almost 40% in daily active users

609% growth in daily active users on the Hive protocol

Major contributions from dapps released or migrating to Hive

Hive Blog has gathered popularity and on average has more than 1.5K daily active users

The WAX blockchain dapp Karma has increased daily active users by 7%

Steemit

Steemit runs on the Steem blockchain and redefined social media by building a living, breathing social economy — a community where users are rewarded for sharing their voices. But all is not well on the Steem blockchain since Justin Sun entered the frame.

Steemit has seen a drop in daily active users by 40% in May and a decrease in value of 57%. However, it currently still stands as the number 1 social dapp on DappRadar.

Hive blog

The Hive Blog runs on the Hive blockchain and is very similar to Steemit. Launched on May 16th, 2020. It also allows contributors to build, live, and grow economically — and users’ voices are heard and rewarded with the HIVE token.

Since launch, the Hive Blog has gathered popularity and on average has more than 1.5K daily active users and is the 2nd top social dapp on DappRadar.

Much of this growth could be attributed to the controversy surrounding the hard fork and creation of the Hive blockchain itself. As disgruntled Steemit users needed a place to vent their anger about the situation and similarly their joy about the creation of Hive.

Peakd

Peakd launched on the Hive blockchain on March 20th, 2020 as a version of the Steem dapp SteemPeak. Since launching, Peakd daily active users on Hive have grown to a daily average of around 1.3K.

Esteem

Esteem is another dapp that had been comfortable on Steem. But like other dapps decided to make the switch to Hive.

Esteem on Steem — The transition was seemingly fast and smooth

Esteem acts a bit like a wrapper around the Hive blockchain. Allowing users to create their own posts, surf feeds, vote, write comments, read replies. Esteem also permits wallet actions and other extras such as search and discovery through different tags.

On Hive, Esteem has managed to maintain an audience of more than 200 daily active users from the very first day it started and maintains its user base steadily. Daily active users have increased by 63% when compared to the initial days of the dapp launch.

Karma

Karma initially started life on the EOS blockchain but due to congestion problems in mid-2019 transitioned over to the WAX protocol in December 2019. Since that time it has maintained a steady user base of around 150/200 users per day.

It is worth mentioning that prior to the congestion issues on EOS, Karma had been enjoying a steady rise. With a peak in daily active users of 3.8k observed in March 2019.

Karma on EOS

Karma on WAX

After a pretty incredible start on EOS and then the shift to WAX, Karma has maintained a respectable number of daily active wallets but nowhere near its peaks on EOS.

Conclusions

Karma would appear to have struggled to carry across its audience from EOS to WAX so far but still holds a strong position in the overall social dapp category.

Positively, Karma at one point attracted and retained users. There is definitely hope for Karma to refind former glory on WAX.

Regardless of the Steem community dapp Steemit being number 1 in the social dapps category. The hard-fork and launch of the Hive blockchain have clearly had an effect.

Massive growth in a very short period of time and the migration of key dapps. Hive is looking to take the leadership position in the social dapp category.

It will be interesting to observe the longterm activity of the social dapps running on Steem and Hive. As the 2 blockchains find their own business model, functionality, and audiences.

Furthermore, it will be fascinating to see which dapps make the transition from Steem to Hive. which ones stick, and to observe which dapps bounce back and adapt to unprecedented situations.