Launching a dapp on Ethereum? Maybe not

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Quick advise: if you are thinking on launching a game or some sort of social dapp you should wait for EOS or re-think your approach with Blockchain. On Ethereum you are gonna loose many investors and users, because it is just not possible to have many interactions between users or with the contract without making either super expensive or will get super slow. Actually it might just crash. 

The latest viral games on Ethereum caused a congestion that doubled the Gas Fees prices and pointed out the obvious vulnerability of the Eth blockchain to handle massive adoption. 

The Ether Cartel and Pepe Farm just caused a big inflow of money lately to the Eth ecosystem, as the attraction comes the numbers of transactions on chain get increased. At the moment the Ethereum blockchain can handle about 13 transactions per second, which is not nearly enough for a big user based of whatever dapps gets built on it, and a pricy business model for an upcoming industry. A game in which you have to pay for every interaction with any part of the game that is build on chain will get expensive, the higher gas price gets the higher cost to play, ultimately becoming not a game instead just a spending machine. 

The tokenization model caught the attention of entrepreneurial projects due to the "easy way" to get funds, many took advantage of the momentum and got millions of dollars due to the virgin ecosystem that needed to be developed. The consequence was the bloom of several meaningless blockchain applications that were just an addition of the "crypto" label to whatever idea launching an ERC20 token that today we see are just pointless almost reaching the scam. This has made the market evolve quickly, and maybe was the bad press or regulations or just the many fraudsters, but now saying you have an idea and combined with blockchain and launch a token is just not enough. 

The first problem is credibility, today the word "ICO" is on red highlights. Investors have become wary to invest in new tokens, and experienced crypto enthusiasts understands the limitation of the blockchain, at least the Ethereum one, which make the idea of another token sale a thing to approach very cautiously. From the legal aspect the Initial Coin Offerings situation got much more difficult for entrepreneurs this year, regulations were imposed and many more are to come, the debate of security vs utility token is a more advanced and fundamental question from everyone intending to launch a project like this. A token is not an easy way to get funded anymore, if you don't deliver you are a scammer, everyone must understand that, the sooner everyone gets that better for the ecosystem.  

Technical limitations are the following problems for new dapps and companies. Last year crypto was a relatively small community, fees were cheap and we were just discovering the capabilities of the technology, we shoot to the stars and quickly we reached the walls. The reality is that right now Ethereum is not made for massive adoption and big number of users. That is why everyone is waiting for any other platform that really allows the flourishment of big ideas, massive adoption and groundbreaking growth for blockchain and crypto.  

As last but not less important aspect to take in mind for dapps in 2018 is to balance the role of blockchain on them. What the scalability problems has shown us is to rethink the approach on what part of the user experience goes on chain and off chain. There are good ideas that do not see the success just because the deployment on the blockchain was pointless or badly done. Just to take an existing product and put it on the blockchain is not enough to guaranteed a successful dapp. 

This is the time of the consolidation, and with it comes the maturity and improvement. The crypto market has grown a lot but is still in its infancy, better thought projects and the success of them will pave the way for years to come, but first we need to educate the entrepreneurial community to understand how to take the best of the technology and community. 

Thank you for reading.