Web3 Watch: EthCC attendees ask: “Where are the apps?”

This week, crypto descended on Brussels for EthCC.

Given that Ethereum popularized smart contracts and was the home of NFTs during the space’s 2021 craze, it seems like consumer applications could have been prominently featured at the yearly Ethereum gathering. But some attendees felt that apps were too muted at the conference — and that crypto’s infrastructure era has overstayed its welcome.

The social lead of the Milk Road newsletter wrote that it “[f]eels like we’ve come to a consensus that we don’t need more infra. We just need usable apps.”

2077 Collective director Emmanuel Awosika said “one of those things I’m excited about is people finally (!) acknowledging consumer apps are necessary.”

Arbitrum developer Offchain Labs’ A.J. Warner said he “heard 10x the number of interoperability/crosschain proving ideas compared to novel user applications” at the conference.

Crypto may still be lacking in compelling consumer apps, but EthCC exit reviews definitely showed that the desire is there. This wishful thinking has shown up in other places too: The Arbitrum DAO notably is aiming to pour $215 million into crypto gaming projects.

This week, Electric Capital general partner Maria Shen released a “market map” categorizing over 1,500 crypto projects. Interestingly, more than one-third of the projects were labeled as apps.

There’s also a case to be made that insisting on more apps might be putting the cart before the horse. Celestia Labs CEO Mustafa Al-Bassam said that crypto should focus on mastering its original use case of payments before it moves on to more complex applications.

There are also crypto apps with real users, even if they don’t currently compete with the titans of Web2. Telegram has a lot of users, and the loosely-associated TON blockchain is drawing lots of attention (alongside lots of bots) to (admittedly rudimentary) Telegram games.

And with Solana blinks, you can now play Pokemon onchain directly within your X feed. So that’s something, right?

Story Protocol is launching a layer-1

A16z-backed Story Protocol announced this week it would be launching the “world’s first [intellectual property] blockchain” with its new Story network.

The chain will let creators upload their intellectual property to the blockchain, where they can then set the terms for how the intellectual property can be used and monetized. Story cast the onchain intellectual property as being like legos, saying the chain would create an internet “legoland.”

In a seeming homage to the week’s frustration with crypto’s dearth of widely-used applications, Story co-founder S.Y. Lee said the protocol wouldn’t just be the “millionth defi chain/app without a clear use case in mind.”

One interesting stat:

Farcaster’s daily active users hit an all-time high for seven-day trailing average at around 67,000 late last week, according to a Dune dashboard.

Also of note:

Blockchain analytics firm Elliptic published a report linking “pig butchering” crypto scams to a “multi-billion dollar marketplace” popular in Southeast Asia named Huione Guarantee.
Soccer stars Lionel Messi and Ronaldinho promoted a memecoin called WaterCoin.
The forthcoming mobile shooter game “For The Win” announced it would be building on Solana.

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