everyone likes to shit on
@blast and is disappointed with their roadmap announcement/app but i think theres a simple reason why they decided to go in this direction and why it might actually work
the major disappointment comes from the fact that the blast app is something none of us (CT) would actually use; and that's the whole point!
Instead of catering to the yield farmers and big accounts in an industry saturated with yield opportunities, they decided to tackle the onboarding of the new wave of crypto users and the new millionaires.
Most of us on CT started with and still keep our whole experience on desktop; but the new generation (even most of the Solana trenches) likely never opened a DeFi app, feeling like it’s too complex and a waste of time to move all wallets to a PC.
It’s undeniable that for the past year, most of the onboarding and tooling development has happened on mobile, mainly with Telegram bots (Trojan, Photon, Bullx, …) and that mobile-based tools are here to stay.
So why not capture this market and newfound wealth by offering them what on paper is a high-yield DeFi savings account?
High yield on stables is something that has always worked extremely well in attracting non-sophisticated users into using DeFi for the first time (think of how many non-crypto-native people were using Anchor).
There are only two other main ecosystems that are working in a mobile-first direction at present:
1. Worldcoin
Again, a project that is heavily misunderstood by CT as a Fed chain; they started off by simply onboarding users in mostly developing countries and offering them a bi-weekly
$WLD airdrop if they downloaded an app.
This obviously seemed like a zero-sum game of unsustainable yield, but guess what: the
@worldcoin app has evolved a lot since then, and I personally feel like at this point, it’s likely the best UX you can get for user onboarding in crypto.
For the people that haven't been following the app's updates, this is what the app looks like now:
Simple UI, an app store, incredibly fast and responsive apps made for and catering to mobile users in the
$WLD eco.
This is all fantastic, but there's a clear scaling limitation for the project: they need to physically have people go to ORB managers and get their eyeballs scanned to be onboarded.
2. Telegram's
$TON and TAC
There are two ways Telegram is currently being used to pave the mobile-first UX:
- Telegram bots acting as a proxy for interacting with SOL/ETH with very specific purposes (Photon, Trojan, BullX, ...)
- The
$TON native way: Telegram’s integrated wallet, clicker apps that have been onboarding a lot of people in the past year, mini-app-centric ecosystem with high shareability to earn higher rewards
The limitations here are also clear. On the one hand, proxy bots have very specific use cases and cannot scale because the private keys need to be held by their creators. On the other hand, TON native mini apps lack a substantial developer base because no one wants to learn Func to cater to Telegram native users.
This is all about to change with
@TacBuild which is building the first fully Telegram TOS-compliant blockchain, allowing TON wallet users to directly interact with the EVM. When they go live, Telegram users will be able for the first time to swap via Curve, Uniswap, use Aave, and all directly from within a mini app. On top of this, people can still interact with the same dApps deployed on TAC from the desktop website.
Overall, I believe it will be a close race between
@blast and
@TacBuild for winning the mobile user base. One has the financial backing, attractive programs, and excellent projects already deployed on the chain. The other has Telegram native integration (along with numerous well-known dApps deploying on Tac soon).
So now here's the situation:
- Plenty of people made money in the Solana trenches and don't know what to do with that money.
- Most of the onboarding for new users comes through mobile channels.
- Only 2/3 other ecos are working in a mobile-first direction.
- Blast is natively giving a high-yield savings account to funnel users.
What to most appears to be a battle between Blast and all other chains is actually a battle just between Blast, Worldcoin, and TAC.
While the
@blast app might only look like this at present, it is going to look a lot different in just a few months. What is just now just a platform for people to put their savings, will become a full mobile-first DeFi ecosystem.