Not All Adoption is Equal
If getting people using BSV is the goal, what should be the industry's focus in order to drive adoption as rapidly as possible.
Everyone in BSV wants to help drive adoption and there are lots of ways to do so. Not everyone is meant to do the same thing, and following your strengths and experience is a must. But, for those prioritizing adoption above all else, it is important to understand that not all adoption is equal.
Mass adoption is an inherently viral phenomenon. Linear adoption = you failed. Getting a technology like BSV to global scale requires exponential growth. This doesn’t happen from people simply stumbling upon BSV apps in exponentially larger numbers. It is driven by the activities of existing users and the incentives that those users create. The key to understanding why not all adoption is equal is looking at virality. Some adoption is a major catalyst for further adoption, and other adoption is not.
For an unfair comparison, look at MintBlue versus Duro Dogs. MintBlue is a blockchain integration platform which has an enterprise customer, Visma, which is using their tool to improve invoicing efficiency. It is a great use case for BSV. MintBlue is the only enterprise application listed at bsvdata.com. It is the only example of enterprise adoption currently in production, an incredible feat.
Duro Dogs is a digital pet NFT game oriented around a creator economy which is building a world full of games, apps, and other NFTs that Duro Dogs players can interact with. Duro Dogs is built on HandCash which is the leading BSV wallet in terms of UX and connected applications. To the best of my knowledge, Duro Dogs is the number one game in BSV in terms of daily active users.
The viral elements in Duro Dogs are easy to spot and were created with intention. We have direct anecdotal evidence of dozens of users who have been referred to the app by friends or family, meaning the true number is likely in the hundreds, a number which is unfortunate in how significant it is for BSV today. We are focused on continuing to add features which incentivize virality through sharing like referrals, perks for sharing on social media (we’ve already done this), and increased social elements of the game (stay tuned!).
More importantly than the viral loops we are creating are the growing number of creators who are building games, apps, or NFTs which extend the Duro Dogs ecosystem. Not only do these creators improve the game, increasing the shareability, but they also share the growth incentive. Games created for Duro Dogs have an incentive to market Duro Dogs. Artists, animators, and others who create NFTs for Duro Dogs have an incentive to market Duro Dogs. Even non-creating users have a strong incentive to drive growth just to increase the value of their existing NFTs. And, as the total number of users grows, the incentive to create new games, apps, and NFTs grows as well. With this type of distributed growth incentive, an ecosystem like Duro Dogs can grow quickly. As our team continues finding effective marketing strategies, something made much simpler through recent advancement in BSV onboarding, we can increasingly pour fuel on the fire.
Even more important than the growth of Duro Dogs is the network effect that forms around a wallet like HandCash by virtue of Duro Dogs adoption. Any Duro Dogs user is a click away from any other HandCash app and will show up to that app with access to their money and their NFTs. Growing users of Duro Dogs creates an incentive to build more HandCash apps. These apps in turn are incentivized to drive growth of HandCash users, contributing back to games like Duro Dogs. These viral incentives are how BSV will get to millions and then billions of users.
While MintBlue’s achievement is extremely impressive, it doesn’t have the same viral incentives as an app like Duro Dogs. This isn’t to say that Visma’s adoption of BSV won’t drive further adoption. In fact, this particular example, being the first enterprise use case in production, will have disproportionate benefit to the ecosystem compared to what one would expect from the actual business activity of timestamping documents on-chain. Again, hats off to MintBlue for beating more established, better funded companies to market.
The major difference comes from the change in incentives from the prior adoption. Visma’s adoption shows the value of BSV to enterprise, but it doesn’t inherently increase the value of BSV to enterprise. It changes perception, not reality. Additional Duro Dogs users actually change the incentive to create new applications for the Duro Dogs ecosystem, within HandCash, or in BSV broadly speaking. More users who are a couple of clicks away from spending in a new app way increases the revenue available from day one, increasing the incentive to build new apps in the first place.
While this isn’t an either/or decision, it is disconcerting that so many resources are going into what may be the lowest virality use-case of BSV possible, data integrity/document authentication. nChain, who is not far from employing more people than the rest of BSV combined, is focused on this use case with their Kensei product. It would be one thing if there was clear, rapid adoption of this technology, but that doesn’t appear to be the case, and if it is, marketing this fact has been a failure. So far, only MintBlue, a team around 1/100th of nChain’s size, has an enterprise app being used in production.
I’ve written a lot about BSV in the past few years. The post I regret most is “Why Bitcoin Needs Enterprise”. The thesis behind this article is that enterprise adoption would be the main catalyst of adoption. I no longer feel this way. Enterprise needs Bitcoin, not the other way around.
If user’s adopt Bitcoin, the enterprises will follow. If there are a million Duro Dogs players, we will be able to get all kinds of enterprise partnerships with brands looking to participate in a fast growing gaming ecosystem. This level of usage will also dramatically improve the availability of funding for other companies building in BSV including those who are improving the base infrastructure layer. It is extremely difficult to imagine a scenario where even a modest level of consumer adoption doesn’t lead to much more rapid enterprise adoption.
On the other hand, even if 100 Visma’s are using BSV for document authentication, what is the incentive for people to start playing a game like Duro Dogs? Enterprise adoption greases the wheels for consumer adoption, but it doesn’t really get them turning. It doesn’t address the chicken-and-egg problem.
Consumer adoption, especially in environments like Duro Dogs and HandCash, has extremely high viral potential and would be a catalyst for enterprise adoption. Enterprise adoption, especially for use cases like document authentication, has very low viral potential and doesn’t clearly serve as a catalyst for consumer adoption. At NFTY Jigs, we hope to demonstrate over the coming months that apps like Duro Dogs will be key to accelerating the timeline for BSV’s adoption and success.
Next time: Is the transaction chart a cope?
Interesting insights on the potential of viral BSV adoption driven by gaming versus enterprise apps.
Looks like nChain needs some salt & pepper 🌶 ✨ we don’t want Vismas, we want Visors, of Cosmos!!