Alipay is not only the world’s most used digital wallet, it’s also one of the world’s largest mega-apps that integrate social functionalities into its primary utility as a payment application. People use it for international and domestic transactions. From global firms doing international trades to street vendors selling fast food to tourists, Alipay is omni-present in Chinese people’s life.
A more commonly cited example of mega-app however, is WeChat, known for its user base of 900 million, the largest of any app in the world. The reason why it’s called a mega-app is that, different from the popular western social apps such as Facebook and Instagram, it seeps into every aspect of our everyday life. Similar to Alipay, people not only use it as a communications tool, they use it to pay for their cellular plan, movie tickets, online shopping, doctor appointments and more. That’s the world of mega applications, the effects of which are much more potent than mere communications tools.
The realization is that the most popular payment apps in the world are not popularized through their payment functionality, but their social aspects.
Then the question is what a cryptocurrency wallet for mass adoption looks like. If we want to have the same impact on people’s life through the blockchain space as the social payment mega-apps have done, we must realize that a simple crypto wallet app for transactions is not going to cut it. It might in the early stages in the industry, but for scaling, more functionalities need to be added. You have Paypal acting like a payment system as a bank, or you add some more flavors to it like Alipay and make it workable for every facet of people’s life.
A Crypto Wallet for Mass Adoption
The lesson from Alipay and WeChat Pay is that we need our wallet to have everyday applications that users would have to use if they want to get things more conveniently. A cryptocurrency wallet is much more appealing when they enable improvement in effectiveness of human activities. Especially when nowadays cryptocurrencies are not the mainstream payment method and certainly not accepted by mainstream wallet applications. We have to start from the users.
The EOSIO ecosystem offers something very unique in the blockchain ecoystem — more Dapps and users have been in the ecosystem for the past months than Ethereum, the most popular blockchain ecosystem yet, has in years combined. This boom in blockchain ecosystem flourishing has bring more use cases to blockchain, and more importantly, more promising prospects to mainstream users so far. Before, we only saw the soft rise of crypto wallet from the popularity of Bitcoin, but now we can officially call these collections of applications for a specific blockchain an ecosystem.
The question now is what kind of applications are bring about everyday use cases for mainstream wallet/social app users. Gambling dapps are pioneers into the blockchain space but will not be the most significant part of blockchain’s future. One of the reasons why China has become a pioneering cashless society is that people have a trustworthy, effective, and scaled platform for people to go about their daily activities. Cellular plan payment for utilities, movie tickets for entertainment, and doctor appointment for health. These apps have eliminated the need for physical media of transaction and face-to-face communications. So really, we could start from here.
Pay for your cellular plans with crypto
Interestingly, mega-apps like WeChat and Alipay are nothing new. They have been around for nearly a decade are their functionalities and path to adoption not difficult to imitate. The part that’s hard for execution is scaling crypto payment methods for daily activities that most likely do not conduct through cryptocurrencies. However, this has been solved by many wallets and exchange intermediaries.
The even harder part is the change in mindset. In the blockchain space where people are generally advocating for more Dapps with short-term goals, simple game dapps are built more and daily utility tools are easily overlooked. However still, some in the industry have noticed this gap and initated to fill it.
Here comes MathWallet.
MathWallet is not only a cryptocurrency wallet for multiple major blockchains, a portal to those blockchain ecosystems, but more importantly, has pioneered into the daily utility aspect even though more popular crypto wallets have not done so. Right now in MathWallet, you can pay for your celluar plan with EOSC and EOS.
This is an ingenius move for Medishares, the blockchain company behind MathWallet, to get into the utility aspect with a first-mover advantage, even though the cellular plan payment is right now only accessible for Chinese users (community users can advocate for cullar plan payment in more geographical regions in Medishares Telegram group). Given the already existing channel for users to create EOSForce accounts through Alipay, we can see more utility tools built in the wallet in future ahead.
Currently, MathWallet support the Dapps built on EOSForce mainnet and governance tools including voting.
MathWallet, however, is by no means what a future mass adopted crytocurrency wallet looks like. It’s more a manifestation of what certain mega-app features and functionalities look like, but if you really want a glimpse into what one cryptocurrency wallet future looks like, you have to ask the questions: how to make society completely cashless through cryptocurrencies. That should be the mindset to go for every cryptocurrency wallet.
In that respect, models adopted by Alipay and WeChat Pay are still the ones to look up to. There are immensely beneficial lessons to learn from the user behavior designs in these mega-apps. One can even say that once these crypto mega-apps are built, user data directly stored on chain and get fed to AI algorithms with user’s permission and user token reward. In that sense, a complete decentralized business loop is built, beginning with user and ending with data analysis for the user.
That is a crypto mega-app.
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Previous articles:
1. Bridging the Chasm between Eastern and Western Block Producers
2. Eliminate Block Producer Collusion in EOS Voting
3. Joining EOSForce Mainnet — Why it Matters | EOSForce BP Awake
4. Blockchain Revelation (Part II) — Development & Challenges of Public Blockchain
5. Blockchain Revelation (Part I) — Development & Challenges of Public Blockchain
