It’s no secret that DApps have struggled to achieve adoption; in fact, according to stateofthedapps.com, the most popular DApp currently has just 1,811 daily active users (DAUs). In our opinion, the poor adoption rates of DApps can be attributed to the high adoption costs of using DApps, such as the time required to sign up, monetary cost or the fear of loss. These adoption costs are particularly high relative to the perceived value gained, especially when compared to Web 2.0 platforms that are designed with much lower adoption costs.Crypto Kitties (which is currently the third most popular DApp with 530 DAUs) is a perfect illustration of the high barrier to entry faced by users. Before users can start to build up their Kitty collection, they are required to have a desktop or laptop, own some Ether and have a Metamask account. Assuming a user has all three, they must also make sure that they don’t lose their password or seed words, as recovering these is simply not possible (a fear of loss that most users are not accustomed to). When comparing this signup process to that of Web 2.0 platforms, for the pragmatic user, these requirements are too cumbersome. Web 2.0 apps have invested considerable effort in streamlining the time and mental effort required to interact with their platforms, with companies such as Apple taking a “two taps away” approach. And so, unsurprisingly, the user experience of Web 2.0 i...
