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How do you think about the tension between bootstrapping supply (devs building apps) while demand catches up? (Users on platforms like base or farcaster)
As a dev, while I am nerd sniped by the idea of mini apps, realistically there isn’t as much incentive to build here because there isn’t actually much demand in terms of raw numbers of users.
The bet is that tba becomes the daily habit app for most users in crypto, and by extension mini apps enable the distribution flywheel you’re talking about. But as it stands, wallet habits are episodic (you come on to check a price now and again, you come on to do a swap) and there isn’t really a daily habit to show that tha owns the relationship with the end user.
Platforms are attractive businesses because owning the distribution flywheel grants quite a bit of power. However, its not as realistic to expect to create a platform by fist seeding supply and expecting demand to follow. In fact this is the exact opposite approach, and you’d find that if there was an abundance of demand, developers would be more than happy to meet the demand. Apples App Store shows this is true even while apple charges egregious fees.
As Ben Thompson once wrote: “the only way to be a platform company is to be a product company first, and acquire the users to incentive developers”.
From my POV it seems like there’s been quite a bit of effort to acquire the developers (hackathons, onchain summer, various sdks) but simply aggregating a bunch of applications in an app without a clear daily habit doesnt give me much confidence as a developer that it’d be worth my time to take the chance on a platform with uncertain odds of success at becoming the distribution flywheel you speak of.
I’m optimistic it’s possible for base to be the platform but I’m wondering how you’re thinking about this 1 reply
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