You might be reluctantly giving into your friend telling you about a new game or social trivia app that uses the blockchain. Or you might be interested in supporting artists onchain.
Quick Hit Basics
blockchain- shared digital ledger with accounts, contracts and tokenssmart contract- programs on a blockchain that reliably run the same across the networkwallet- an account which interacts with the blockchain to manage assetstoken- a type of contract that represents a fungible or non-fungible assetdecentralized- not centrally coordinated, ideally immutable with specific leversdefi- decentralized finance or onchain financial services that run on smart contractszero knowledge- using math and proofs to secure private or compressed data (ELI5)
Apps
Things that are working fairly well onchain
- Rodeo - creating new ways to share creations
- Warpcast - “sufficiently decentralized” social network for optimists and builders of a better tomorrow
- Polymarket - prediction market for sports, politics and other events
- Superfluid- streaming payments every second
- Courtyard - collectibles marketplace
Reading & Podcasts
Learn about the ecosystem and stay up-to-date on the latest
- Rehash - diving into the onchain ecosystem
- The Delphi Podcast - institutional market insights
- Bankless - exploring everything that is upgrading legacy institutions
- Good Game - Alliance accelerator founders discuss the current market and trends
- We Do a Little - a podcast about the intersection of crypto and culture
- Internet Explorers - explore the frontier of onchain culture
tune in live on Fridays at 1pm ET live.seedclub.xyz - Coindesk, Blockworks, The Block - news and analysis
Cool but don’t fit other categories
Some things don’t fit neatly in boxes
- Pudgy Penguins - your new favorite pudgy friends
- BoysClub - club for creative builders at the intersection of media, culture and crypto
- Ernst & Young - Nightfall continues to drive enterprise discovery of leading edge technology
- Opepen - a collection of evolving art pieces with a running theme by Jack Butcher
- Shibuya’s White Rabbit - an anime by Maciej Kuciara and pplpleasr co-developed with the community
- Nouns - nouns’ mission is to proliferate the noggles ⌐◨-◨
- QRCoin - where is attention in a slop market? QRcoin beckons
Security
Security comes before wallets for a reason. Stay safu!
- ZachXBT - helps track down exploits and regularly recovers funds
- Samczsun - legendary security researcher on X
- Beau on Security - regularly shares security insights and updates
- Officer’s Notes - shares tools and resources for protecting assets and security
- MichaelK.eth - product security at Metamask, a solid EVM wallet
Wallets
Wallets keep your assets, they range in security levels. Adjust accordingly.
dive deep into wallets on walletbeat
Software
- Rainbow an solid wallet with a fun theme
- Rabby - a helpful wallet that takes extra precautions
- Exodus multi-coin wallet that can hold BTC, ETH, etc.
- Phantom - a popular wallet for Solana
Hardware
- Grid Plus - secure hardware wallet with rich display
- Ledger - secure hardware wallet
- Trezor - secure hardware wallet
Decentralized Finance - DeFi
Financial services re-imagined without intermediaries
- Aave - decentralized lending markets
- Lido - liquid staking for Ethereum ($stETH)
- CoW Swap - CoW (Coincidence of Wants) DEX that removes slippage and MEV
- AlchemixFi - self-repaying loans
- PoolTogether - no-loss savings lottery
- tBTC & Threshold Network - permissionless wrapped bitcoin on EVM chains
General Learning/Metrics
- Fast DeFi Tutorial - crash course on decentralized finance
- DeFi Llama - tracking protocol stats across many chains
- Lets Do DeFi - another DeFi crash course
- The Future of Asset Tokenization - Forbes on asset tokenization
- RWA - real world assets onchain dashboard
Games
Have a little fun
- Cambria - experimental MMO with real stakes and onchain significance
- Axie Infinity - the original play-to-earn game
- EVE Frontier - space survival MMO from the creators of Eve Online
- Parallel - space/futuristic TCG with an expanding universe
- Forgotten Runes - a universe of unique characters and stories
- Treeverse - a top down open world classless MMORPG
- SoRare - collectible trading cards onchain
Privacy
Provable and private is a powerful combo
- Veil - privacy-enabled protocol on Base
- Railgun - privacy-enabled protocol on Arbitrum and other EVM chains
- Nightfall v4 - privacy preserving Layer 2 for several token standards
- Aztec - private zk-based Layer 2
Onchain Organizations
Tools for coordinating in onchain organizations
- Hats - powering efficient onchain organizations
- Decent - onchain infrastructure for nimble DAOs
- Den - powerful interface for team wallets built on Safe
- Safe - flexible wallet primitives for managing and holding assets
- Splits - contracts for splitting funds
- Tally - governance tools for critical decisions in onchain organizations
- DAOhaus- tools for onchain organizations to manage treasury
- Nouns Builder - Nounish organizations sell new membership tokens every day
Rollups or Layer 2s
Networks inheriting security from Ethereum. c/o l2beat
Scaling the base chain is good up until it becomes difficult to verify for smaller entities. The larger the resource requirements the base chain requires the less likely a small entity can acquire the resources to run the chain and verify correct state updates.
- Base - bringing the world onchain, from Coinbase
- Optimism - building the Superchain (chains include: Base, Ink, Soneium)
- Arbitrum - General purpose L2 scaling with easy to spin up L3 chains
- Starknet - zk-based L2 leveraging Cairo contracts
- Scroll - zk-based L2 leveraging EVM-compatible contracts
- Aztec - zk-based L2 leveraging Noir contracts
Eventually these will feel like a single chain and worrying about chains will not be necessary. UX is quickly improving around cross-chain communication via intent protocols.
Frontiers
Spaces that are still maturing but have early signs of potential