Third-party apps in Web3 social are currently in a death spiral. 

Super 💀 - acquired by Farcaster 
Phaver 💀 - failed token launch; shut down; prior #1 Lens app 
Buttrfly 💀 - shut down; Top 5 Lens app 

Firefly App standing the test of time and frankly growing through this same time frame. But I'll be honest, if we are the only other significant 3rd party app, I'm not sure anything has changed. 

What's the point if the protocol team is building the dominant app? That's like Bitcoin core devs running the only wallet. 

Yes, there are other third-party apps but they are either ghost towns or growth is stalled*. I'll spare their names. 

*No Growth = No Investors to help you weather the storm.

I’ve used all of em and Firefly is absolutely my favorite and quite superior imo! I hope you and your team get the support you deserve! 

Also appreciate your responsiveness and the fact that you added something I suggested almost immediately 😳

1000 $DEGEN 💎✊

onchain m&a ~ @fireflyapp + mask network ~ @rara (exit 2023)

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There are a few problems for 3rd party apps vs social protocols.

Feature Leadership. New protocol features drop first on protocol apps, then trickle down to 3rd party apps. Sometimes this breaks our apps. Sometimes it means we are flat footed. A more welcoming developer experience could help some but priorities and timelines will never truly align.

Incentives. Protocol teams with dev co's have incentives to profit off the app layer (see uniswap app). Third-party apps have incentives to grow their user base and find ways to profit. This means third-party apps are incentivized to build their own growth features rather than push growth ideas down to the protocol level. This could change if there were protocol incentives for app builders. Right now Farcaster is eating all of the incentives through private equity rounds where a token approach would benefit the ecosystem as a whole. 


> there are other third-party apps but they are either ghost towns or growth is stalled

What do you think are the main reasons for this? What needs to change?

Nicely pointed out! I haven’t used Super nor Buttrfly so much. Phaver had hype, but poor execution and it wasn’t supported by Lens. Firefly is standing strong and improving by implementing new and useful features for creators. I do see kind a biased overview here too.