A New Era for Onchain Apps?

Last week at EthCC, my co-host Nick and I presented our findings from a year of hosting Apps No Entrees — a Bankless show where we spotlighted crypto-native apps you could use daily. The talk struck a chord with the audience, eager to learn about apps they could actually use rather than just infrastructure they might build on.

After testing over a hundred apps, we realized that crypto has finally shifted — moving past infrastructure obsession into an era where it's the apps that actually matter. Through our analysis, we've seen three core catalysts primarily enabling this shift and three distinct archetypes of apps that retain users better than others.

I share these with you today in the hopes that if you've been eager to build an app but haven't known where to start, these examples will energize you and provide a path forward. 👇

Catalysts Enabling the App Renaissance

This shift didn't happen overnight. It required several key developments to converge, creating an environment where builders could focus on user experience rather than technical workarounds.

⚙️ Infrastructure Maturity

While not fully at Web2 ease just yet, the technical barriers from last cycle have largely dissolved. Account abstraction, embedded wallets, and native auth create seamless experiences. Solana and Base have made cheap, speedy transactions the default; and these features come in accessible development kits that let developers focus on building experiences rather than wrestling with infrastructure.

🤡 Memes as Design Input

As an asset class that’s devoid of any traditional “value” drivers — utility, revenue, roadmaps — memecoins reveal what actually drives (and holds) value in crypto: collective identity. Put differently, memes have functioned as design primitives, reinforcing that a strong group narrative and shared rituals prove essential to retaining users. More importantly, they've created a fast-paced, 24/7 onchain activity loop — constant swapping, posting, tracking — that gives builders an always-online user base to build for.

📲 Mobile-First Adoption

Crypto has gone mobile-first. 63% of activity now comes from mobile devices. When crypto lives in your pocket rather than your desktop, it becomes part of daily life rather than a separate activity.

Three Winning App Archetypes

Building on these catalysts, we identified three successful archetypes for apps that retain users over months rather than minutes.

1️⃣ Apps Built Uniquely for Memes

By nature, memecoins prove quite overwhelming — high-noise environments that exhaust as much as they excite. One archetype of apps that we’ve seen not only gain, but retain users, are those that look to calm this chaos with tools that remove noise, loss, or degeneracy. 

• Axiom exemplifies the push against noise — a unified trading terminal bundling wallet trackers, Twitter feeds, token analytics, and discovery into one interface. It includes Hyperliquid perps, creating a one-stop shop where everything feels smooth and gas-free.
• Purity Finance tackles loss by letting users batch-close token accounts on Solana. Every token requires a 0.002 SOL deposit. For active traders, closing 1K accounts returns 2 SOL — simple utility that recoups value from dead tokens. The team also just released Burst, a tool that curates token baskets around emerging trends, helping users cut through noise and capture early momentum with less guesswork.
• Lemondrop addresses degeneracy through a browser extension that acts as a self-imposed tariff, automatically tacking on a small purchase of Bitcoin to every swap — dollar-cost averaging into $BTC while trading memes.

2️⃣ Apps Unlocking New Speculation Formats

Since crypto is hyper-financialized by default, new apps often introduce speculative primitives without much thought. But it’s easy to tip into over-financialization, which ends up wearing users out rather than exciting them. Fair-launched memes, perpetuals, and tokenized social assets like Friend.Tech shares can lose momentum fast. Still, the demand for fresh speculative structures — not just fresh assets — clearly persists. Prediction markets have managed to walk this line, offering formats that feel engaging instead of draining.

• Polymarket stands out by offering a form of speculation that feels both productive and, at times, intellectual. Its success around the election proved this. While you could buy “Trump-related” stocks if you believed he’d win, Polymarket gave the most direct way to bet on that belief. That kind of unique exposure is what made it compelling. Of course, not every Polymarket is like this — if you think BTC will be above “X” on “Y” date, you can just long perps. It’s only when prediction markets offer a distinct form of speculation that they actually matter.
• Ponder is a lightweight prediction market on Farcaster that makes speculation feel fun instead of draining. It asks quick daily questions like “What’s the best primary color?” and lets users bet on what they think the majority will answer. With tiny stakes ($0.50–$10) and fast resolution, it feels more like a social puzzle than a financial tool. It’s basically what made me a daily Farcaster user — and the data shows I’m not alone.

3️⃣ Apps Making Crypto (at least seem) Multiplayer

Crypto’s default mode is hyper-individual and PvP. We can chalk it up to trading culture, but this cycle it feels even more pronounced — and more exhausting. It also cuts against crypto’s original pitch of coordination and community. That’s where a third archetype of sticky apps comes in: ones that make crypto feel genuinely multiplayer, not just a zero-sum game.

• Crypto: The Game brings Survivor onchain. Players pay 0.1 ETH to join, forming prize pools. They're split into tribes competing in daily challenges. It uses crypto infrastructure but the core experience is about alliance-building and social dynamics.
• PvP Trade lets you long and short directly from Telegram groups, using Hyperliquid’s markets. Simple button and text commands let you open positions, copy others, or counter-trade friends. Despite the name, the public nature of all trades creates a transparent, collaborative feel — when everyone can see each other’s positions, people are more likely to share strategy than treat others as exit liquidity. 

The infrastructure is finally here. The patterns are clear. We've shown what succeeds: apps that calm chaos, create novel speculation, or enable genuine multiplayer experiences. If you’re looking to build, take this as a sign. There are models out there that work. The tools are ready. It’s up to you to assemble them, however you see fit.

Feel free to reach out to me with any questions (@davewardonline on Twitter or @robinson on FC) or if you want an early tester. Also if you're reading and are interested but non-technical, that’s no problem. We cover tools and guides for you to get started vibecoding in Mindshare every Friday.