The problem Dapps solves

Dapps solves a fundamental problem in the current online community landscape: the misalignment of incentives between content creators and their followers.

In the traditional model, creators invest their time, energy, and resources into building online communities on platforms like YouTube, Instagram, or Patreon. However, the value generated by these communities is largely captured by the platforms themselves, through ad revenue, data collection, and platform fees. Creators are left with a fraction of the value they create, and followers have no tangible stake in the communities they help build.

Dapps addresses this problem by introducing a new model of community ownership and value sharing. With Dapps, content creators can issue digital shares in their communities, which their followers can purchase. These shares represent real ownership and appreciate in value as the community grows and thrives.

For creators, this means a new way to monetize their work and align their incentives with their community. Instead of relying on ads, sponsorships, or platform cuts, creators can fund their work directly through the support of their most dedicated followers. This gives them more creative freedom, financial stability, and a direct stake in the success of their community.
For followers, Dapps turns passive consumption into active investment. By buying shares in the communities they love, followers become stakeholders with a vested interest in the community's growth and governance. This incentivizes more meaningful engagement and fosters a sense of belonging and co-creation.

On a broader level, Dapps makes the online world more equitable and user-centric. It shifts power and value away from centralized platforms and towards the creators and communities that drive online engagement. It enables a new generation of self-sustaining, decentralized communities that are owned and governed by their members.

Challenges I ran into

Our journey with Dapps has been a rollercoaster of challenges and pivots, each teaching us valuable lessons about product-market fit in the web3 space.

We initially launched dapps.co as an appstore where each dapp could be minted as an NFT, calling them "smart dapps" that would run out of the box from within the NFT. While innovative, we quickly hit a classic chicken-and-egg problem:

1. Developers needed to make their dapps compatible with our NFT standard.
2. Users had to pay gas fees to mint and try products.

Despite onboarding 38 dapps and achieving 2,800 mints, it wasn't enough to gain significant traction. Users also struggled with constant wallet switching to interact with NFTs on different chains.
However, this experience wasn't in vain. Working closely with these 38 dapp founders revealed a crucial insight: their biggest challenge was building genuine communities and acquiring real users. Many of their Telegram and Discord channels were overrun with bots, hampering effective communication with their core audience.
This realization led us back to the drawing board. We asked ourselves: How can we solve the UX issues of smart dapps while helping creators build authentic, engaged audiences?
Our solution: Dapps Social. We added a social layer where creators could build communities, and users could buy shares in these communities. We implemented a bonding curve for share pricing, which accomplished two things:

1. It signaled to creators which users truly loved their product.
2. It provided an additional revenue stream from share trading.

We're now integrating smart dapps into Dapps Social, allowing them to load seamlessly within the social network without relying on external wallets or chains. The user experience is now as smooth as using an app store on your phone.
This pivot has shown promising results. We've amassed over 74,000 users on our invite list, indicating strong interest in this new direction.