Why Are There No Big DApps on Ethereum?

On July 30, 2025, we volition beryllium celebrating a decennary since Ethereum launched connected mainnet. Inarguably, 1 of the biggest milestones successful this industry’s abbreviated life.

When it launched arsenic the world’s archetypal astute declaration platform, this was evidently thing wholly caller and a wholly caller mode of reasoning astir software. Instead of renting entree to idiosyncratic else's level that could alteration the rules oregon fastener you retired astatine immoderate moment, 1 could – successful mentation – present enactment successful systems that belonged to everyone and nary one, wherever the rules were written successful codification and couldn't beryllium arbitrarily changed by a CEO's whim. Users would ain their date, and bundle would beryllium maintained and managed by a web alternatively than a boardroom. The consequences seemed beauteous utopian.

However, astir 10 years connected from Ethereum’s motorboat and the dreams of a Web3 mentation of Amazon, eBay, Facebook oregon TikTok haven’t arrived, and are obscurity connected the horizon.

Gavin Wood, Ethereum co-founder, and his imaginativeness of “Web3” envisaged precisely that. Joe Lubin, the renowned laminitis of Consensys, said that “Ethereum volition person that aforesaid pervasive power connected our communications and our full accusation infrastructure."

The libertarian writer Jim Epstein predicted a twelvemonth aft Ethereum’s motorboat that “the aforesaid types of services offered by companies similar Facebook, Google, eBay, and Amazon volition beryllium provided alternatively by computers distributed astir the globe.”

Vitalik Buterin himself envisaged Ethereum “law, unreality storage, prediction markets, trading decentralized hosting, [hosting] your ain currency,” successful his 2014 Bitcoin Miami speech, wherever helium announced Ethereum to the world. “Perhaps adjacent Skynet,” the fictional artificial neural web from the Terminator films. He has described the level helium created arsenic some a threat and an opportunity to platforms similar Facebook and Twitter backmost successful 2021.

The Scale Problem

The obstruction to achieving this imaginativeness is scale. The astir palmy user applications contiguous service hundreds of millions of users. Instagram processes much than 1 cardinal photograph uploads daily. eBay handles astir 17 cardinal dollars successful transactions each quarter. Facebook's messaging platforms process trillions of messages annually.

Ethereum processes astir 14 transactions per second, and Solana tin grip implicit 1000. Instagram handles implicit 1 cardinal photograph uploads daily. eBay processes 17 cardinal dollars successful transactions quarterly. The mathematics doesn't work.

Let's entertain the decentralized eBay illustration for a moment. A genuinely decentralized eBay would request acold much than elemental payments. Every listing instauration oregon update would necessitate onchain transactions for point metadata, pricing, and information details. Auctions would request automatic bidding solution with time-locked astute contracts. Escrow systems would person to clasp funds until transportation confirmation, with DAO arbitration for disputes.

User estimation systems would necessitate immutable standing retention tied to wallet addresses. Inventory absorption would request real-time banal tracking, perchance done tokenized goods. Shipping confirmations would request oracle integration for transportation proofs. Marketplace fees and taxation royalties would request astute declaration enforcement. Optional individuality verification systems would necessitate decentralized credential management. Each enactment would multiply the transaction load exponentially beyond what existent infrastructure could support.

It goes without saying that this would necessitate a blockchain of unprecedented velocity and throughput. Frankly, a decennary aft Ethereum, the infrastructure conscionable hasn’t been determination to enactment it.

The Economics Don't Work

The concern exemplary hasn't ever made consciousness either. Modern applications request monolithic standard to make gross that covers improvement costs. Furthermore, furniture 2 solutions fragment users crossed platforms, wherever (for example) Arbitrum users can't straight interact with Polygon applications. This defeats the intent of gathering unified planetary computing.

This isn't theoretical. OpenSea struggled with profitability contempt dominating NFT trading with high-value transactions & fee-tolerant users. If you can't nett from selling integer creation to crypto enthusiasts paying hundreds successful fees, however bash you physique a marketplace for utilized goods? The economics are adjacent worse for lower-value transactions that specify mainstream commerce. A decentralized societal web charging $5 per station would beryllium dormant connected arrival.

Gaming applications that necessitate a fewer dollars successful transaction fees for each point commercialized won't pull players who expect the aforesaid for escaped elsewhere. So far, the lone viable on-chain businesses person been those that tin extract monolithic worth from comparatively fewer users – fundamentally high-stakes fiscal applications and speculative trading.

The Calvary Is Coming

The manufacture accepted a mendacious tradeoff: information and decentralization, oregon functionality and scale, but not both. But transaction throughput has steadily accrued (and volition continue to) crossed networks arsenic the exertion matures. We tin present execute monolithic standard adjacent with impervious of enactment chains, maintaining the information and decentralization that made blockchain revolutionary successful the archetypal spot (rather than the premature clasp of impervious of involvement that compromised these principles).

Zero-knowledge proofs let users to beryllium transaction validity locally, submitting lone tiny cryptographic proofs that are aggregated recursively and successful parallel by a web of provers. Networks tin process millions of transactions without each node verifying each 1 individually. When users beryllium their ain transactions, the marginal outgo of adding an further transaction approaches zero, and blockchains tin yet enactment the economics that mainstream applications require.

But 10 years on, it's wide that the imaginativeness erstwhile laid retired by the futurists of Web3 has moved astatine a disappointing pace. Let's anticipation the adjacent decennary moves a small faster – and, fingers crossed – our blockchains too.