I Tried Dozens of Onchain Social Apps, Here's What I Found

The author argues that onchain social apps have not gained mass adoption because their user experience still fails in three areas: interaction, financial, and content, and because most projects are speculative or imitations of Web2 apps. Financial UX is cited as a problem because Zora and Sound price in ETH and advertise "free" collection while users still must pay gas fees in an unfamiliar currency. The piece also says speculative apps such as Bitclout, friendtech and pumpfun typically fade within a few years, and it points to Polymarket's web2 login and fiat payment options as an example of good UX. Steemit, which at its peak had 1 million daily transactions and 60,000 DAU, is cited as an example of retention failure.