Our August 2020 overview of the dapp ecosystem covers a total of seven blockchains. Not only the three main dapp blockchains – Ethereum, TRON, and EOS are included, but also Steem, Hive, ThunderCore, and WAX.
Within this review, we are going to analyze daily active wallets, total value locked, transaction volumes, and native protocols token price changes.
Table of contents
- Key takeaways
- Ethereum
- TRON
- EOS
- The best of the rest
- Conclusions
Key takeaways
- High Ethereum gas prices have not affected the DeFi ecosystem yet. $24 billion in transaction volume generated in August. More than $7 billion total value locked at the end of August.
- Ethereum transaction volumes account for 94% of total transaction volumes in August. The protocol increased its share by 2%.
- TRON showed positive development in all metrics. Daily active wallets and transaction volumes reached their best results in 2020.
- EOS spiked in all metrics. DeFi and DEX dapps were behind the sustained growth.
- Other protocols like Hive and WAX increased steadily, ThunderCore exploded and reached 25,000 active wallets daily.
Ethereum
Ethereum is still facing contradictory results. High Ethereum gas prices decreased the number of active wallets drastically in almost all categories.
On the other hand, DeFi and DEX dapps witnessed different activity trends. Although a transaction currently costs more than $50 now, it hasn’t slowed down DeFi enthusiast activity. The madness surrounding the DeFi ecosystem seems to be increasing all the main metrics: DAUWs, TVL, and transaction volumes.
The Ethereum token price also faced a significant increase. At the end of August, the prices surged to $420. This is the biggest value in 2020 so far and doesn’t seem to be stopping now. Within a few days of September, the price already surpassed the $470 level.
DeFi and DEXs dapps compensated the losses in other categories
On average the number of daily active wallets decreased by 6% in August. The biggest decrease was in the Gambling & High-risk category. Daily activity dropped by more than double from 6,700 to 2,393 active wallets.
Games & Marketplaces also follow the trend. DAUWs decreased by 33% from 1,500 to 1,000 daily active wallets. Interestingly, the daily activity was 10 times lower in August than at the beginning of 2020.
On the other hand, on average DeFi and DEX active wallets grew by 16% month-on-month. The biggest contributor was Uniswap V2, where daily active wallets grew from around 10,000 to more than 14,000.
TVL surpassed $7 billion
Similarly to daily active wallets, the value of the Ethereum blockchain was mainly generated by DeFi and DEX dapps. According to DappRadar DeFi page, the total value locked increased by $3.61 billion and reached $7.5 billion by the end of August.
There are a couple of reasons behind the growth. First of all, growth is partly driven by the increase in the token price. $1.5 billion or 42% of the growth is generated by the DeFi token price bubble.
The rest of the increase was driven by increased interest in lending and liquidity protocols such as Aave, Uniswap, and Curve. Recently protocols surpassed the $1 billion line in total value locked.
Transaction Volume surpassed 24 Billion USD
Record-high figures could be spotted in transaction volumes too. Transaction volumes almost doubled in August and surpassed the $24 billion line. Of course, DeFi and DEX dapps played a vital role there. Both grew by $9 billion in August.
Uniswap v2 grew by $3.8 billion reaching $5.4 billion in August. The dapp was the best performer in August. Curve also showed incredible results increasing value by $3.3 billion and reaching $4.9 billion in August.
Last but not least was lending protocol Aave increasing transaction volumes by $2.1 billion and reaching $3.5 billion in August.
TRON
TRON has always been a fascinating protocol especially in 2020 due to two factors. First of all, the release of version 4.0. Secondly, the attempts to create a DeFi ecosystem on the TRON network. That has had an effect on three main elements: Daily active wallets, transaction volumes, and the value of the TRX token.
The value of Tron’s native token TRX has faced a plunge to $0.00853 in March 2020. In the last couple of months, the price steadily increased and reached its highest value in 2020 of $0.034.
High-risk dapps boom; DeFi grew by 118%
Daily active wallets reached an all-time high in August by surpassing 100,000 active wallets. All categories on TRON have performed very well. Especially high-risk dapps.
Gambling & High-Risk has increased activity by 161% in August compared to July 2020.
While gambling always accounted as the biggest category on TRON, High-risk took over the leadership position. On average the category generated 50,000 daily active wallets in August.
The dapps behind such tremendous growth were Tron supernode and TRONCHAIN. These two dapps generated around 10,000 and 6,000 daily active wallets respectively in August.
Since the time TRON entered the DeFi space an exponential increase in daily activity month on month can be observed. In August the DeFi category faced a tremendous increase of 118%. The biggest contributor was dapp JustSwap.
JustSwap is the first automated market maker exchange on TRON. Similar in almost all ways to the features on Uniswap, it allows users to swap TRON tokens, such as TRX, USDJ, WIN, etc, as well as locking tokens into liquidity pools.
Transaction volume surpassed $300 million
TRON’s Transaction Volume surpassed $300 million in August 2020. The volume has increased by 95% compared to July 2020.
The biggest contributors were High-Risk dapps. They grew by $110 million month-on-month and surpassed $130 million in value. Bank of TRON and 200TRON made their mark in the category. They generated $38 and $35 million respectively.
Growth of $48 million could be spotted in DEXs too with the vast majority of the growth generated by JustSwap. Within the first month of existence, the dapp generated $43 million in transaction volumes and was responsible for more than half of the volume generated in the DEX category.
EOS
In August, we witnessed steadily increasing activity on EOS. Different from other months, on average daily active wallets, increased by 9%. While the categories of high-risk and gambling decreased again, new DeFi dapps compensated the loss.
EOS token price surged too by 7%. At the end of August, it reached $3.26. As reported before, after the events of Black Thursday in Mid-March the price was around $2.4.
Increasing activity in the EOS DeFi ecosystem
In August, daily active wallets grew by 9%. The average active wallet amount increased from 17,353 to 18,934. Although the biggest contributors to the EOS blockchain are the games and gambling categories, the best performance is seen in DEX and DeFi.
DEX surpassed 1,200 active wallets level while DeFi reached around 1,200 active wallets.
Newdex represents almost 100% of the DEX category activity. The number of active wallets grew by 70% month-on-month.
The biggest contributor to the DeFi category was a new dapp DeFibox. The dapp is similar to the Ethereum liquidity protocol Uniswap. DeFibox peaked in August and surpassed 700 active wallets.
On the other hand, Games & Marketplaces slightly decreased. The daily active wallet number declined from 9,000 to 8,000 daily.
Transaction volume surpassed $1 billion in August
Transaction volumes exploded back in August. The biggest contributors were the DEX and DeFi category.
The number one contributor was Newdex that generated almost $800 million or 80% of the total transaction volume.
Another DeFi dapp that surged impressively was the before mentioned new dapp DeFibox. Transaction volumes grew by 530% and surpassed $34 million in August.
The best of the rest
In August, ThunderCore’s daily active wallets exploded and reached an all-time high. The number of active wallets grew from 13,600 to 25,000. The dapps behind this tremendous growth were: TT mining and Galaxy Blocks.
The TT mining dapp is a minimalist dapp that features very few features and invites you to buy TT and participate in festivals. Of course, high return rates are promised for such contributions. On average the dapp generated more than 13,000 active wallets daily and was responsible for more than 53% of the blockchains activity.
Another major contributor was the dapp game Galaxy Blocks. The dapp tripled its active wallets during August and surpassed the 700 level.
Previously the Hive and Steem battle was discussed a lot. It is quite obvious now, that Hive not only won the fight but also presented stable growth in August. The most important dapp that helped to deliver great results was Splinterlands.
The WAX protocol performed quite well in August. The daily active wallets peaked due to the newly presented marketplace dapp AtomicMarket that already generates 500 unique active wallets daily.
Conclusions
Two trends could be spotted across all blockchains. DeFi ecosystem growth and increasing interest in high-risk dapps.
By no surprise, the biggest portion of DeFi activity is generated in Ethereum accounting for around $23 billion in transaction volume. The total value locked increased significantly too and surpassed $7 billion.
While other metrics surge, we spot a decrease in daily active wallets. This is still due to high Ethereum gas prices. ETH prices reached their highest value in 2020.
TRON demonstrated growth in all main metrics. Both daily active wallets and transaction volumes reached their highest value of 2020. TRX also faced an increase in August. The vast majority of activity was within the high-risk category.
EOS blockchain witnessed increased activity too. The biggest spikes were seen in the DEX and DeFi categories. This proves that EOS’s attempt to join the DeFi ecosystem is likely to be a successful one.
The best of the rest title in August 2020 goes to the ThunderCore protocol. The activity exploded due to the airdrop dapp TT mining.
