Crypto Consumer: Running Notes

6/1/2024

Running notes on crypto consumer.

We're seeing a slow and steady rise of consumer crypto, and less of 'infra that enables consumer crypto'. This is what I'm most excited about currently.

Most of the infra is already here, and I personally think what matters is the way you orchestrate UX. A lot of the DeFi apps are primarily interfaces to a set of contracts, and quite often dont focus on the end user. Additionally most of these apps have less than 10k users and the bulk of volume comes through whales.

What I'm thinking about is how do we get to consumer crypto applications that service 50-100k users or more. Building a top tier consumer app also allows you the ability to vertically integrate other protocols.

Zapper was a good one back in defi summer but there is lots of room for improvement here (passkeys, automation etc). The endgame is that consumer apps will own the end users and end up becoming bigger than protocols themselves.

Crypto Consumer Metrics

  • Privy
    • 7.5m Users onboarded across all privy apps
    • 500k+ transactions in May 2024
    • 2.5m MAUs
    • Source
  • Farcaster - The breakout open social protocol
    • 490k users
    • ~980k casts/ day (as of 06/12/2024)
    • 561k addresses connected
    • DAU has grown from ~2k in late January 2024 to 60k in June 2024.
  • Coinbase Smart Wallet
    • Magic Spend allows consumers to use their coinbase balances.
    • Uses passkeys by default, reducing friction to near zero.
    • Has ~ 7m monthly transacting users
  • New paradigm of apps - PWAs
    • Add to homescreen, onboard within minutes
    • Once users fund their wallets its a "near web2" experience
  • Friend.tech (source)
    • 17k ETH protocol fees.
    • 14m cumulative transactions.
    • ~350k ETH in total protocol inflow.
  • Base (source)
    • 12.5m users
    • ~2.5m transactions a day since 02/2024.
    • Onboarding 50-100k+ users daily.
    • 2m Weekly active users.
  • Pump.fun (source)
  • Zora chain (source)
    • 1m total addresses
    • 100+ ETH in weekly mint volume (last few weeks)
    • Total mint volume nearing 5k ETH.
    • 13.2m mint transactions.

Traditional Consumer Metricsy

  • Instagram: 2B MAUs
  • Youtube: 2.49B MAUs
  • Twitter: 360m MAUs