Week 30 — The Big Bad World Of DApps (and 3 of my favourite ones)

Just last week, we dived in deeper into the main different types of wallets you’ll most likely encounter as a newbie foraging into this brave new decentralised world.

I have to caveat that my explanation is not meant to be all-encompassing. It is not meant to list down every single type of wallet out there in the market. If I were to do that, it would confuse and discourage readers from reading on and taking action. I wrote last week’s article as the precursor to this one, which serves to show you some of the crazy DApps out there in different networks.

It is meant as a good starting point for readers who have bought cryptocurrencies before, but haven’t the experience in putting their cryptocurrencies to work (which is a shame). Here’s the whackiest (and most useful and relatively low-cost) DApps out there.

Now, mind you, I am still new to this whole game and I may not have listed out some of the best DApps out there, but the main point you should focus on is the type of DApps out there that you can experience.

Pancakeswap Finance

Yes, it’s rabbits and pancakes. But don’t be fooled by the childish images and exterior, it forms a huge part of the Binance Smart Chain network (a network run by Binance) and it is has the highest daily trading volume in the chain with about $650 million traded day in day out. (This number has probably since increased)

This Decentralised Exchange (DEX) and Automated Market Maker (AMM) does not require much to register, no KYC/AML hoops to jump through which both a potential boon and a bane.

There are lots of things to explore in just this DApp alone. From lottery draws to providing liquidity and even farming new coins, there’s loads to be explored here.

Pancakeswap has weathered some tough times when someone found a loophole in their system just last year in October that plunged Pancake’s coin value to less than $0.01, it has since rallied beyond $20 dollars. The future seems bright for the team and one can only speculate if they can sustain the early boom in growth.

Origin

This one’s really cool, I’ve had a deep love for e-commerce for almost 4 years and to have a Web3 powered e-commerce store combines everything that I love right now.

I’ve explored many ecommerce sites and I’m glad to find not only is origin free to use, it is also powered by IPFS (a decentralised file storage system to store all your data).

Under the origin protocol, you’re allowed to open multiple stores and manage them through one account, this allows you to have greater usability and control over what kinds of stores you’re looking to open up.

Obviously, apart from the storage of files being decentralised, origin also allows you to receive payment in crypto as well as through regular payment gateways such as Paypal, Stripe and the like.

Origin has been steadily marching on through the roadmap that they have created. As of the time of this writing, origin not only has an e-commerce solution but they have plans to ride the NFT wave and to help artists launch their own NFT artwork.

They have also just had their own native token (OGN) listed on coinbase. This project is taking leaps in terms of it’s foray into this whole concept of decentralised e-commerce and so too has the price of it’s token been driven up. Right now origin is trading at around $2.30-$2.50. Who knows where they will end up a year from now.

I’ll write a more detailed article about my experience with setting up my own origin store, so stay tuned for that!

Yieldwatch

This whole DeFi wave has been taking over the crypto community for quite some time and Yieldwatch has carved out a small niche within the Binance Smart Chain (BSC) network.

They may not have been the first ones to have created a solution like this, but I like the concept of what they are doing.

With the rise of so many DeFi projects out there in the marketplace, it’s hard for an individual to keep track on the status of your investments. Many crypto enthusiasts dabbling with DeFi have definitely faced this issue. No one sticks 100% to a single platform, and because of that, what happens is that these enthusiasts then begin to diversify their digital assets into multiple platforms.

This makes keeping track of your portfolio very cumbersome, having to go into each platform to look at your returns.

So, that’s where Yieldwatch comes in. Yieldwatch compiles all the investments that you have placed in different DeFi platforms on the BSC network and shows you an in-depth breakdown on every single part of your portfolio.

The free version is great for newbies like me, but the catch is that for every $100 that you have placed into the DeFi investing platforms, they require you to purchase 1.5 Watch tokens in order to get the premium functionality of Yieldwatch which allows you to get a more detailed breakdown of how your money is being handled. Pretty good way to earn business I must say.

Conclusion

These are not the only projects that are out there in the Web3 ecosystem. I haven’t even begun to talk about the types of Web3 games that you can play. But, this breakdown serves as an introduction to the stuff you’ll see on most decentralised networks such as Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, Zilliqa and the list goes on.

In the next article, we’ll demystify the crypto in cryptocurrency! That’s right, we’ll be talking more about the cryptographic technology that powers cryptocurrencies!

Stay tuned next week!