Every new technology goes through a maturity curve. After years of being sort of limited to the niche crypto native community, blockchain and web3 projects are now finally looking to enter the next phase — building for the mainstream users. And that would require the founders/builders to identify and execute the key drivers of mass market adoption. India is already a huge crypto market. As per the Chainanalysis’ 2021 Global Crypto Adoption Index, India ranks 2nd in global crypto adoption. But still the adoption of web3 projects can be termed far from mainstream.
What will drive mass adoption?
Defining and tracking your competition well
When you’re building a mass-market web3 product, you need to realize that you’re not just competing with your web3 counterparts, you’re also competing with the existing web2 companies. So your feature parity and strategy need to be accordingly defined. All GameFi companies essentially compete with traditional web2 gaming companies. All NFTs also compete with traditional art. And the list goes on.
Not just, as a non-utilitarian web3 project, you are always competing with general asset classes. At the end of the day, adoption for most of our dapps would mean end users purchasing tokens or NFTs to interact with your dapp, that’s real money. So now you need to ask yourself why are you asking the user to spend money on your dapp? Are you providing any utility for the money spent or you’re just asking the user to invest? Because if you are, you are essentially competing with all the different asset classes out there. What are your returns compared to say, manufacturing stocks or energy ETFs or plain bland pieces of land?
Building trust with your user
Every new piece of technology is looked at with suspicion and apprehension in the beginning, especially if it includes people spending/investing large sums of money in it. And it’s incumbent on the builders to build that trust early on. Many times, the way to go about that is replicating the mental models the users are already familiar with. Like when ecommerce was in its nascent stages, Flipkart pioneered the execution and mass market adoption of cash on delivery. Even Uber had to launch cash as a payment option to unlock their growth in India, the first country they did this for.
Web3 and crypto are looked at with similar suspicion and skepticism by the mainstream users. So as an ecosystem of builders, we need to recognize that. We’re churning out new technology every second, the ecosystem is largely unregulated, it’s fairly early days. So we need to build trust markers in our dapps. We need to be completely transparent with the users about the various costs they might incur (gas fees, platform fees, TDS, GST etc). We also need to build robust dapps which safeguard customer information and fight fraud.
Focus on providing the most seamless experience
User experience is a very important tenet of mass market adoption of new technology. How many steps does it take for the user to achieve their goal plays a very key role. For years, digital payments saw very low adoption even among the users who had credit/debit cards — it was just hard to remember the 16 digit card numbers. And then came UPI which made it so easy and fast to pay digitally.
Another example is digital stock trading. They have been fairly niche for a long time before companies like Robinhood, Zerodha and Groww simplified the user experience of buying equities and other assets. For example, to drive mainstream adoption in India, on ramp / off ramp experience on your dapp needs to be like UPI payment experience- native, fast and minimum clicks.
Interoperability
We have invariably managed to create web3 silos which has made it harder to operate from one chain to another. Bridges are being built to improve cross-chain connectivity but the UX layer needs to be built in a way that these are hidden. All said and done, the mainstream user probably doesn’t know the difference between Solana and Cosmos. It’s incumbent on the web3 community to educate them but until that happens and even when it does, we need to build interoperable products.
It’s up to you to decide which of these drivers will help scale your dapp. And once you have done that, you also need to decide which components would you need to build yourself and which ready-to-use modules can you plug for a faster time to market.
What is Onmeta and how can it help you with mainstream adoption?
Onmeta (www.onmeta.in) is a full stack On/off ramp payment solution (API/widget integration) for all Gaming Dapps, NFT marketplaces and Defi Dapps to reduce costs incurred by end users and simplify UX to help them onboard non-native crypto users.
Onmeta Products:
- Onmeta Checkout: One click checkout solution, allows your user to purchase crypto/NFT without even leaving the platform. Whitelist API & SDK based widget integration available.
- Onmeta Off-Load: Off-Ramp solution, allow users to convert Crypto earned to fiat and withdraw to their bank account.
Why use Onmeta?
- Iframes support for native UX in both API/widget integration — user doesn’t leave your dapp ever!
- Instant payments: Takes <60 seconds to validate the payments and deposit tokens/fiat!
- Crypto liquidity — integrated will all leading DEXs to offer the widest token coverage!
- Cheapest token price for your users sourced from multiple sources!
- Onboard Indian users — largest crypto market in the world
- Developer friendly — customisable Drop in widgets, integrate quickly with a FEW LINES OF CODE.
- KYC onboarding — enable users to authenticate and register
- Multi-chain support — Integrate once and deploy your DApps across chains
- Compliant with regulations — You focus on BUIDLing, we manage the user onboarding and compliances!
If you are a GameFi, DeFi, NFT marketplace, wallet or any web3 dapp looking to onboard mainstream Indian users, please reach out to know more
Prateek Gupta, Head of Business
prateek@onmeta.in
