Author: CloudY, Sihan
Editor: Vincero, YL
Review: Crystal
1. Development history of the entrance
The current Web3.0 industry as a whole is in its early stages of development. Compared with the traditional Web2.0 industry, traffic acquisition is still in a relatively primitive stage and is usually carried out in a rough manner. With the development of the Web3.0 industry, we roughly divide the methods of acquiring traffic into three major stages according to user needs.
Early days:
In the early stages of the crypto industry, the main demand of users was the trading of cryptocurrencies. Most users in the crypto industry often accessed centralized exchanges (CEX) through web or mobile terminals to use various functions, such as the early Mt. Gox and Bittrex. Therefore, at this stage, CEX was the main entrance for traffic, resulting in the emergence of a large number of CEXs, such as Binance, Huobi, OKEX, KuCoin, MEXC, Gate, etc. In addition to trading cryptocurrencies, since users also have the need for fiat currency deposits and withdrawals, CEXs often provide P2P deposit and withdrawal services to further control traffic entrances. However, because CEX holds a large market share, once a problem occurs in CEX, it will have a serious impact on the entire market. The Mentougou incident is a good example.
Mid-term:
With the continuous development of the crypto industry, the functions required by individual users have gradually become richer, such as using blockchain wallets to store digital currencies or transfer money, and interact on the chain. Especially after the birth of Ethereum, the launch of smart contracts has brought about the development of the on-chain ecology. For a time, DAPPs emerged like mushrooms after a rain. With the popularization of basic knowledge in the crypto industry and the influx of a large number of new users, the usage rate of wallets has also increased. From then on, wallets have also assumed the mission of various on-chain DAPP entrances. In the subsequent development, the business scope of CEX and wallets has further expanded. CEX has gradually begun to carry out financial derivatives business around transactions as the core, such as adding contracts and options to compete with wallets. However, due to the single public chain and the lack of on-chain infrastructure, the major wallets support fewer chains, and the functions of transfer and cross-chain are not as good as the exchange experience. Especially after the birth of TRON, the extremely low transfer fee has a great advantage over CEX. However, due to the launch of EOS and USDT, the demand for on-chain interaction has increased significantly, the functions of wallets have been further expanded, and the traffic part has shifted from CEX to wallets, and the on-chain ecology of the crypto industry has gradually taken shape.
now:
Nowadays, users' needs are more diversified. Due to the wealth-creating effect of the crypto industry, users are eager for more direct ways to make profits, and more complex businesses are involved. As for traditional CEX, CEX has introduced IEO and other extremely wealth-creating functions, and has also worked hard to integrate various derivative services and DAPPs into its own ecosystem, such as Binance's latest DeFi section and mini-program functions, as well as Binance Pay. CEXs such as MEXC and Gate choose to launch more "dog" projects to give users more choices. Therefore, CEX is becoming more and more critical as the entrance to the entire Web3.0 ecosystem. At the same time, wallets have also begun to support multiple chains, and have begun to audit the security of the entrance, and have built-in DEX and other functions. Due to the further popularization of wallets and users' demand for complex financial services, DeFi Summer has emerged, and various DEX, lending, oracles, and derivative trading markets have emerged in an endless stream. The wealth-creating effect of the coin issuance wave has brought a large number of new users to Web3.0. During this period, some excellent leading Web3.0 applications independently used their own apps (or DAPPs) as their own independent traffic entrances, such as Opensea, StepN, etc., and used traditional Web2.0 applications as entrances to attach Web3.0 application traffic, such as plug-ins for Twitter, and some traffic overflowed to social platforms such as Telegram and Discord. In general, with the surge in traffic brought about by industry development, the competition for traffic has become more intense, and due to the different demands for various types of traffic, traffic entrances have begun to form a diversified development model with exchanges and wallets as the main body and other traffic entrances developing in parallel.
2. Current Status of Web3.0 Portal
However, according to NFTgo.io data, on October 28, the total NFT transaction volume on Ethereum was about $10.68 million, while the transaction volume of Reddit Collectible Avatars was about $2.5 million. In other words, Reddit NFT has a transaction volume equivalent to about 25% of the entire Ethereum NFT market. Opensea currently has about 2.3 million cumulative users, and most of the 2.83 million holders of Reddit NFT have registered Reddit Vault. The number of Reddit wallet registrations is almost the same as the number of wallets that have traded NFTs on Ethereum (about 3.43 million). A Web2.0 platform can obtain the same scale of traffic as the entire Web3.0 NFT industry by issuing an NFT, and the number of users will exceed Opensea, the largest Web3.0 NFT market, in a short period of time. It can be seen that although Web3.0 has many revolutionary innovations, there is still a lot of room for further development.
When we review the changes in the entrance of Web2.0, we find that its development sequence is: portal website - search engine - PC social platform - mobile social platform. From a large and comprehensive information collection that has been screened, to a self-screened information collection, to the user's own information output, the user's fragmented information output, and finally the user's fragmented view information output. There are certain similarities with the current Web3.0, from the initial POW public chain investment dominated by BTC, to the surge in investment targets in the ICO era, to the IEO and IDO coin screening, and finally the user's spontaneous or DAO-based research and analysis of high-quality projects and recommendations. Information is changing from centralization, passivity, and complexity to decentralization, initiative, and simplification.
Based on this phenomenon, we think about the current status, distribution and future development of Web3.0 portals. Since there is no unified definition of Web3.0, this article defines Web3.0 as follows: Web3.0 refers to a collection of decentralized applications running on the blockchain. These applications (DAPP) allow anyone to participate without sacrificing personal data. Therefore, when we talk about Web3.0 portals, we will not limit it to "Crypto", but include all objects that can be directed to it, such as traditional Web2.0 platforms, centralized exchanges, Web2.0 games, etc.
We will classify Web3.0 portals according to different user behaviors, briefly describe their characteristics, and compare the main portals under the same category. Finally, we will give our views on the future development of each Web3.0 portal through their characteristics and comparison results.
3. Comparison of Web3.0 portals
Before classifying the Web3.0 entrances, we need to determine the purpose of users entering Web3.0, or what Web3.0 can bring to users:
Change the logic of existing applications: copyright confirmation, privacy ownership, asset ownership, behavioral incentives
Cryptocurrency Investment
NFT Investment
According to the above functions of Web3.0, we have drawn the process of users entering Web3.0. Based on this process, we have defined two major categories of Web3.0 entrances:
1. Account system (deposit and withdrawal and fund management): centralized exchanges, independent deposit and withdrawal projects, deposit and withdrawal aggregators, cryptocurrency ATMs, cryptocurrency bank cards and over-the-counter transactions (OTC); EOA, CA and MPC wallets, account abstraction (AA).
2. Web3.0 Dapp (tools, social and entertainment): DEX, NFT Marketplace, copyright trading market, domain name, DeSoc, GameFi, X to Earn.
Account system
1. Money Management
Fund management involves the storage, sending and receiving of crypto assets. Apart from early exchanges, wallets are the main entry point for users in the crypto industry, carrying user identities, assets and even reputations. Security is the first priority of a wallet, and convenience is the second priority. The core of a wallet is actually a public and private key manager. Its private key generated based on asymmetric encryption and other technologies has the user's absolute control over the wallet, address (public key), and assets. Therefore, how to manage private keys is a key technology for different wallet products. On top of this, how to expand more based on wallets is another battlefield for different wallet products.
The main types of wallets are currently divided into custodial wallets and non-custodial wallets. In simple terms, it means whether you control your wallet through a private key. The main custodial wallets now are exchange accounts, where the exchange keeps the assets in your wallet for you. Non-custodial wallets are relatively diverse, including hardware wallets, address wallets (EOA), and smart contract wallets (CA). EOA wallets are further divided into plug-in wallets and mobile wallets based on how they are used. At the same time, EOA wallets have another extension called multi-party secure computing wallets (MPC). And a new wallet concept, account abstraction (AA), upgrades the EOA wallet to have the function of smart contracts.
(1) Custodial Wallet
"Having a private key means having a wallet" sounds very safe, but in fact, it is precisely because the private key/mnemonic phrase is too important that the preservation of the private key/mnemonic phrase becomes the threshold for users to use wallets. The user experience of most existing wallets is far from the level of Web2.0. This is why CEX has become the first choice for most users entering Web3.0, because CEX allows users to just remember the login password. But the flaws are also obvious. Once the exchange goes down, runs away or is hacked, the assets in CEX may also disappear. The Mt.Gox incident is a good example. In 2014, it announced that it had suspended user withdrawals because hackers stole 850,000 bitcoins, and then declared bankruptcy. In addition, since all funds in CEX are controlled by CEX, CEX can call funds by modifying numbers (for example, the infamous data smash), or even directly embezzle escrow funds for value-added.
However, these shortcomings do not affect users from continuing to use CEX, because through the exchange's own credibility endorsement, coupled with the exchange's ease of use, and the fact that most users only need secondary market transactions, the current exchange still has most of the traffic in the entire Web3.0. In December 2021, there were 295 million users in the crypto industry, and Binance, the world's largest exchange, had 120 million users, but Uniswap, the largest DEX, which is also an exchange, had only about 3.9 million users. This shows that CEX has a great advantage as an entrance to Web3.0. In other words, most users choose to sacrifice security for convenience.
(2) Non-custodial wallet
In contrast to CEX, most wallets sacrifice convenience for security, which results in a high threshold for users to enter Web3.0. Specifically, hardware wallets are the safest because only when you have the hardware wallet and password can you access the assets in it; but correspondingly, it is more complicated. First of all, users need to spend a lot of money to buy hardware wallets, and they must carry them with them every time they use them. Once the hardware wallet is lost, the funds in it will also be lost.
The EOA wallet is relatively safe and convenient. Because the EOA wallet can be used based on a web plug-in or mobile software, users can access it more conveniently, but users still need to remember and keep their private keys. The EOA wallet provides another type of private key-mnemonics (12 English words converted from private keys). Once the private key/mnemonic is lost, the wallet is no longer safe, so while it is safe, it is also a risk. According to CertiK statistics, the losses caused by private key leaks from 2022 to date have been at least US$274 million, including professional market makers in the industry such as Wintermute.
Although there are new technologies now, such as the MPC wallet based on the EOA wallet, and the more scalable CA wallet, to achieve the so-called private keyless or low-threshold wallet, the EOA wallet is still the mainstream. Among them, Metamask (Little Fox) is the leader, with more than 80 million users in December 2021, and its monthly active users in March 2022 even exceeded 30 million. Although it is still dwarfed by Binance, the position of Little Fox is already unshakable among the current software wallets.
In an MPC wallet, each party will get a part of the private key instead of all of it. This is similar to a multi-signature wallet, where multiple parties must sign to initiate a transaction. The MPC wallet disperses the private key in a decentralized way off-chain, increasing the security of the wallet account. In addition, the MPC wallet can also perform the key fragment refresh function: replace the original key fragments in each person's hands with new key fragments to solve the problem of key loss. Users only need to match the corresponding email or biometric verification information to retrieve their wallet assets. Compared with the current traditional wallets with cumbersome security operations, this latest solution undoubtedly increases user convenience and lowers the threshold for Web3.0 entry.
The emergence of account abstraction (AA) is likely to change the current situation of wallets. Account abstraction combines EOA and smart contracts. Without changing the underlying architecture of ETH, the EOA wallet is upgraded to a smart contract wallet (CA), which greatly reduces the entry threshold of EOA while giving it unlimited scalability, and realizing most of the functions of the current Web2.0 account. For example, payment of Gas fee, no private key, account social recovery, etc. Specifically, smart contract wallets mean that the wallet itself will be programmable, customizable and even modular, which will give smart contract wallets infinite imagination. After having a smart contract, the wallet can customize different security thresholds for different amounts of transfers, the classification of operation permissions for different DAPPs, and a series of situations that can be achieved by smart contracts, which will be closer to users. Current smart contract wallet cases: Argent (social recovery) Gnosis Safe (multi-signature) A3S (wallet transferability).
2. Deposit and Withdrawal
The key factors of deposit and withdrawal projects include: identity verification, deposit from fiat currency to cryptocurrency, and withdrawal from cryptocurrency to fiat currency.
Usually, users who trade more than a few hundred dollars per month need KYC. KYC requires identification documents (ID card, passport or driver's license), proof of residence and facial recognition. Most compliant exchanges require users to undergo KYC before depositing or withdrawing funds, but not all exchanges do so. Independent deposit and withdrawal projects, deposit and withdrawal aggregators, and cryptocurrency ATMs are more decentralized and free. However, centralized exchanges and large OTC platforms support more types of fiat currencies because they have more legal and technical resources.
In terms of payment and collection methods, they are limited to wire transfers, ACH transfers, debit/credit cards, and third-party payments (such as Google or Apple). However, some exchanges, such as FTX, support the conversion of cryptocurrencies within the platform into fiat currencies and transfer them to the receiving account via wire transfer. This brings great convenience to users and avoids the possibility of receiving black money on OTC or decentralized platforms.
However, there are frictions in the exchange process between fiat currency and cryptocurrency, such as exchange rate fees, distributor markups, blockchain network fees, etc. Generally speaking, the fewer the distributor levels, the less friction there is. Therefore, in terms of friction losses, CEX = OTC<independent project<aggregator.
Centralized exchanges are the most commonly used platforms for depositing and withdrawing fiat currencies. They generally have remittance licenses in most countries around the world, support the most fiat currencies and cryptocurrencies, and have the lowest fees. However, CEXs can provide cryptocurrency payment services to achieve another form of withdrawal. For example, Binance's Binance Pay can be used to book hotels, buy shopping cards, etc. CEXs themselves have a large number of secondary trading users, so it is relatively easy to convert them into deposit and withdrawal customers.
Independent deposit and withdrawal projects (such as Moonpay, Transak, and Wyre) operate like small exchanges, but most of them only provide fiat currency deposit and withdrawal services. Their interactive interface is simple and easy to use, and the user learning cost is low, but these projects will have distribution bonuses.
As the name implies, deposit and withdrawal aggregators (such as TransitSwap, KyberSwap, MetaMask's fiat deposit service) aggregate various independent deposit and withdrawal projects and CEX to achieve the best exchange rate and charge commissions. But the most important thing is that they can introduce functions such as DEX, liquidity staking and NFT market to achieve one-stop deposit and withdrawal and Swap/Staking services.
The most commonly used OTC model is the P2P model, where buyers and sellers directly conduct fiat currency deposit and withdrawal transactions. Some platforms (such as Binance P2P) have to use a third party to eliminate the trust cost to match buyers and sellers, and charge very low fees. However, P2P means that payment methods can be relatively diversified. In theory, as long as both buyers and sellers agree, they can trade in any way. However, the risk is also obvious, that is, you may passively participate in money laundering, resulting in card freezing, or even being forced to return the funds obtained from withdrawals.
Web3.0 Dapp
1. Tools
The potential of tool applications as a Web3.0 traffic entrance should be the largest among the three sectors. Tool applications are not only based on Web2.0 to make improvements, but also cross-era innovations. Like DeBox (social payment platform), Monaco (instant social media), and Skiff (collaborative work platform), they are essentially based on Web2.0 applications and add Token economy, and achieve privacy, transparency, and trustlessness based on blockchain, so they are all named "Web3.0 xx" - Web3.0 WeChat, Web30. Weibo, Web3.0 Google Docs. In other words, they do not provide a motivation for users to abandon the current Web2.0 and completely switch to Web3.0, but motivate users to use it briefly through Token. Therefore, we will focus on the role of DEX, NFT and copyright trading platforms as Web3.0 entrances in the following text.
（1）DEX
DEX DAPP plays a vital role in the process of users entering Web3.0. In the past, users had to go to CEX to convert between different assets because the order book exchange depth on the chain was far less than that of CEX. When AMM DEX appeared, the role of market makers was removed, the transaction depth on the chain was greatly improved, and the birth of liquidity mining further optimized the trading experience of AMM DEX. The existence of DEX allows users imported by other DAPPs to directly convert the tokens they have obtained into stablecoins such as USDT and USDC on the chain to lock in profits.
But the problem with AMM DEX is that there is no market maker. When the depth of an LP pool is insufficient or users make large transactions, it will cause huge slippage. Take the cUSDC incident on September 28 as an example: a user sold cUSDC worth 1.5 million U on UniswapV2, but because cUSDC had basically no liquidity, he only sold about 520U.
（2）NFT Marketplace
NFT (Non-fungible Token), as a new asset form based on blockchain, is a good traffic entrance for Web3.0. When Beeple's Everydays: The First 5000 Days was sold at a sky-high price of $69m, people began to realize the value of digital assets, and also gave birth to a large number of NFT-related projects, such as the metaverse sector represented by Sandbox and Decentraland, the PFP sector represented by BAYC and CryptoPunks, and NBA Top Shot. Subsequently, some copyright-related NFTs such as IP copyright, patent copyright, and music copyright also appeared to help creators confirm their rights and interests.
NFT is the most easily understood form of crypto assets. The value of a painting is not only on the canvas, but the art itself, so digital paintings also have their value. Compared with traditional paintings, NFT is more shareable and can well satisfy the user's desire to show off. Therefore, PFP-type NFTs came into being. CryptoPunks, as a representative of Crypto OG, automatically gave those who own it the title of Crypto Native. BAYC hopes to build a club to break the GAP between mainstream culture and Web3.0. It has also become a symbol of reputation and identity because of the participation of stars or well-known organizations such as Curry, Jay Chou, JJ Lin, and even China's Li Ning. Unlike PFP, Sandbox and Decentraland are recognized by major international companies for buying their land at high prices to enter the metaverse. Their land can be used as a brand display platform to attract customers for the company. On the contrary, their existing customers will also understand Web3.0 and the metaverse. Similarly, NBA Top Shot also introduced the original NBA audience to Web3.0 through NFT, and then attracted more people to join with the wealth-creating effect, achieving further increases in price and fame. Similarly, copyright NFTs introduce the audience in the creator field to Web3.0 through the participation of creators, while giving creators more sources of income, it is convenient for investors or fans to invest in or collect the copyright of the work.
As the core place for NFT value-added, NFT Marketplace, such as Opensea, Rarible, and SuperRare, just like DEX for most DAPPs, gives users the possibility to make profits on NFT and guides users to do more interactive behaviors on Web3.0. On this basis, the derived NFT lending platform, NFT fragmentation platform, and NFT transaction aggregator all serve as tools to assist users in entering Web3.0.
2. Social
Domain names and DeSoc under the concept of DID are typical entrances in Web3.0 applications. Similar to traditional DNS domain names and social media, they can directly carry and convert user traffic, using "good numbers" and "information" as tools to acquire users. The global domain name registration market size in 2020 is 374 million, and according to Messari research, the number of ENS (Ethereum Domain Name Service) registrations reached a record high of 1.12 million in the third quarter. When we compare the number of Medium and Mirror users, we can also find that Medium has 25 million monthly visits, while Mirror has only 2.1 million. It can be seen that as a Web3.0 entrance, domain names and DeSoc have more than 10 times the potential.
(1) Domain name
Web3.0 domain names convert complex addresses (such as Vitalik Buterin's address: 0xAb5801a7D398351b8bE11C439e05C5B3259aeC9B) into readable characters (Vitalik.eth), which greatly reduces the operational threshold of addresses as interactive objects during recognition and input. At the same time, the meaning of readable characters to users can give addresses additional value (such as birth year, name, brand name, etc.). The current domain name is still in its early stages of ecology, and can only simply replace addresses with short characters, but we can still see that when the Twitter name is changed to xx.eth, the identity barrier between Web2.0 and Web3.0 is broken. "xx.eth" means all the on-chain data associated with the address in the ETH ecosystem. In other words, it records the "lifetime" of this address. When it is applied to the Web2.0 world, it is equivalent to bringing in all its interactions in Web3.0. Web2.0 users can locate the same "person" based on this name.
With the development of domain names, in addition to .eth, there are also .ether and domain names based on other public chains, such as .bnb of BSC, .apt of Aptos, .evmos of Evmos, and domain names issued by companies focusing on multi-chain domain names, such as .bit of DAS, .nft, .crypto, and .dao of Unstoppable Domains. Twitterscan is also expanding the relevance of domain names to Twitter. However, in terms of practicality and recognition, no one can match .eth at present, because ETH's user volume and capital volume still dominate. Other domain names mostly temporarily attract users through the expectation of airdrops, and cannot retain users for a long time.
(2) DeSoc
In May 2022, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin, together with economist Glen Weyl and Flashbots researcher Puja Ohlhaver, published an article titled "Decentralized Society: Finding the Soul of Web3.0". As a result, the term DeSoc became popular. The DeSoc in the article is based on Soulbound Token (SBT). In essence, it wants to construct a credible decentralized society through the non-tradability and DID of SBT. At present, the mainstream applications of Web3.0 are still concentrated in the financial field, such as increasing capital utilization, faster and safer transactions, more complex derivatives, etc. DeSoc can change the current over-financialization of Web3.0 and lead us to a "more transformative, diverse, socially distanced, and increasing returns future."
Taking the current popular DAPP as an example, task platform applications such as Galxe and Quest3 convert the needs of the project party into a series of tasks and issue corresponding SBT as proof, and users can obtain SBT by completing tasks and wait for the project party’s later airdrops. Some of these tasks only require users to interact in Web2.0, such as Twitter, Discord, and Telegram, which can attract a large number of Web2.0 users to enter Web3.0 through the money-making effect.
Another intuitive example should be Binance’s SBT - BAB, which uses BAB to import user traffic that has passed KYC into BSC, and retains users with the help of BAB airdrops, while developing projects based on BAB, such as Lifeform.cc, which requires users to own BAB to claim its game character token LBT.
3. Entertainment
Entertainment Web3.0 applications are an important part of the industry. Among these APPs or DAPPs, GameFi is the most important one. Compared with other Web3.0 portals, GameFi has a natural advantage, that is, it has a huge appeal to a large number of users in a certain period of time, including a large number of traditional Web2.0 users. Among the mainstream GameFi games today, there are many mature classic games in the Web2.0 era that have been chain-modified in the Web3.0 way, which means that GameFi is naturally endowed with excellent ability to break the circle.
GameFi, which became popular last year due to the attention paid to Axie Infinity, has become one of the most important tracks in the Web3.0 field. The number of active players on the chain has been maintained at around one million for a long time, among which GameFi is concentrated on three public chains: BSC ETH POLYGON. The concept of "X to earn" derived from this, such as the creative outdoor Web3.0 game StepN invested by Binance, which has been very popular this year, also represents the latest entertainment trend in the Web3.0 field. In addition, there are still many types of entertainment apps or DAPPs, such as imitation short video apps, dating software, etc. All of the above new generation Web3.0 applications are mainly oriented towards user profit, supplemented by game features, and have strong breaking circle capabilities. This type of main application means that GameFi in the Web3.0 era has more mature game play and traffic attraction compared to other entrances.
Although entertainment applications still have a series of problems such as too many on-chain interactive operations and high requirements for public chain performance, the overall advantages outweigh the disadvantages, and phenomenal entertainment applications are emerging in an endless stream, such as Axie Infinity, RACA, and StepN. For external traffic, some of them use traditional EOA wallets, and some, such as StepN, use centralized apps to guide users to register for built-in wallets. These measures have helped these GameFis to attract traffic and convert them into new comprehensive Web3.0 users.
Thoughts on Web3.0 applications:
As mentioned at the beginning of this article, we currently divide the application entrances of Web3.0 into two categories: account system and DAPP. These two types of entrances have their own advantages and disadvantages: For the account system entrance, this entrance method is more like a process from surface to point. Users first deposit funds through the centralized account system path to create their own account system, and then the account system (such as exchanges, wallets, etc.) radiates to points (Web3.0 applications such as DAPP). This is a more traditional traffic entrance method. Due to the maturity of this type of entrance, the deposit system is relatively complete and convenient, and users have full choice and freedom. The disadvantage is that it is relatively single and one-sided in terms of attracting traffic categories, and it is impossible to make different strategy configurations for different groups of people. As for Web3.0 DAPP-type entrances, this is more like a radiation from point to surface. Traffic often enters through a point (Web3.0 DAPP) and then enters the larger Web3.0 ecosystem. This method can give full play to the subjective advantages of different types of DAPPs and attract their respective target traffic. For example, some specific NFT Marketplaces and the once popular Axie Infinity have attracted a large amount of traffic from outside the circle through the influence of DAPP itself.
At present, account system entrances have a long history and are more mature. For example, users of exchanges still account for the majority of Web3.0 users, and wallets are also a must for entering Web3.0. However, more and more situations now show that excellent leading DAPPs or Web3.0 applications in the track have the ability and foundation to skip the exchange and wallet entrances because of the huge advantage of independent huge traffic, and have begun to build independent APPs or application terminals as entrances. This type of Web3.0 DAPP represents a more emerging trend and deserves our attention. But in any case, the two still face some similar problems at the same time. For example, the entry threshold of the Web3.0 world is still much higher than that of the Web2.0 world. While playing their own advantages, they are still committed to eliminating such obstacles.
4. Outlook for the future entrance of Web3.0
As a representative project of this year's traffic hit, StepN has temporarily shelved a series of plans due to various reasons of subsequent operations and the overall environment. However, at the current stage of development of the Web3.0 industry, judging from the eye-catching ability and traffic aggregation ability of the hit applications born in the industry, they have created conditions for them to create their own independent entrance with huge traffic in a short period of time. After achieving phased success, they are not satisfied with the opening of the game market, but want to use the traffic entrance to develop Launchpad, DEX and even more DAPPs. A series of metaverse pictures around the Stepn ecosystem. It has to be said that this is a very imaginative move. The author believes that this is also the way for many entrepreneurs who are not satisfied with Web3.0 APP or DAPP to rise. StepN imitates the development path of wallets and at least opens up a way of thinking, that is, hoping to use its peak traffic to develop the ecosystem and retain traffic. Such a move makes Web3.0 entrepreneurs realize that this path is not only for wallets, but also for APP DAPP and even various traffic capture developers in the future. Try it. Recently, MOOAR, a new NFT trading platform under StepN’s parent company Find Satoshi Lab, is about to be launched. Although the project failed to fully adopt the original idea, StepN has at least set an example.
We believe that the reason why the traffic of such short-term popular applications can escape the gravity of exchanges and wallets and independently monopolize traffic is only a phased situation, that is, the bonus period of the industry is limited, whether for users or entrepreneurs. We believe that this is only due to the immature or unbalanced development of the current Web3.0 ecological development. When the industry matures, this phenomenon will gradually disappear, and precious traffic resources will be concentrated in a few leading applications. This is like in the period of rapid development of the Internet, whether it is the application end or the traffic entrance, it can be achieved. A hundred flowers bloom, but in today's mature industry, most services and even functions are gathered in a few leading APPs, and small and medium-sized applications are either dead or integrated. This is not just the result of capital operation. We believe that the most fundamental reason is that this is in line with human nature. As users, we cannot enter through complex and complicated entrances for a long time. Traffic always tends to be convenient and one-stop integrated entrances. This may be the inevitable result of product demand. Web3.0 era applications that focus on the concept of decentralization may be able to decentralize the backend, but the frontend still cannot escape the gravity of user habits, and user habits are difficult to decentralize.
Therefore, we believe that under this situation, the future Web3.0 traffic entrances, whether they choose account systems or Web3.0 DAPPs, should still be concentrated in a few, and should conform to the form of radiating from the surface to the point. Specifically, from the current situation, exchanges and wallets are currently the most powerful and most likely to achieve this great outcome. If CEX and wallets can grasp the current golden period of traffic and develop entrances that conform to user habits and usage environments, they should be able to greatly improve their dominance in terms of traffic. For example, the drop-down applet interface in the main interface of the Binance exchange, which integrates various APP and DAPP entrances, is an attempt that is worth learning in my opinion.
We believe that the concentration of traffic entrances in a few leading applications is the most likely industry model in the future mature stage of the industry (currently, exchanges and wallets are the closest to this point), and this way of grabbing traffic does not violate the decentralization of Web3.0 and the spirit of respect for individual users, because their backends are still built on the entire decentralized approach. Based on the spirit of decentralization, whether there will be better solutions for traffic entrances in the future that can further optimize this centralized way of traffic entry is worth thinking about.
In addition, Musk has recently completed the acquisition of Twitter. As the world's largest Web2.0 social network and a huge portal that carries the entire Internet traffic, it is worth looking forward to Twitter's reform of the Web3.0 method. Musk may make major reforms to Twitter. It is worth pondering whether such a huge Web2.0 and traditional Internet behemoth will carry out Web3.0 reforms, in what specific ways and to what extent, and what far-reaching impact these will have on traffic portals. Assuming that Twitter can carry out decentralized reforms or be compatible with a large number of Web3.0 industry applications, it may break the current pattern of all Web3.0 traffic distribution. We believe this must be a landmark event. Let us wait and see.
Reference：
Reddit NFT: Dissecting the mass adoption curve from Web2 to Web3
Total OpenSea traders over time (Ethereum)
The first stop for Web3 users: an inventory of business models for cryptocurrencies and fiat currencies
MPC-based keyless wallet, the "breakout" of Web3 entrance
Low-threshold wallets — a necessary tool for the mass adoption of Web3 applications
Overview of Ethereum blockchain account abstraction and its potential use cases
From DNS to ENS, the Web3 Era of Domain Names
Understanding Decentralized Society (DeSoc)
A&T View: The most comprehensive GameFi upstream and downstream development status and prospects (Part 1)
A brief history of NFT: NFT’s shining moments spanning six decades
