Dan Romero
@dwr.eth
Should an app and a protocol be named the same or different things? Uniswap is the app (website and now mobile app) and a protocol. This hasn't stopped developers from building on the Uniswap protocol. In addition, in the previous cycle, many consumers wanting to trade tokens onchain used the Uniswap website. Others used wallets with swap functionality built on the permisionless Uniswap protocol. For NFTs, the app and protocol were split—OpenSea and Seaport. However, since it was a consumer app, the brand being the thing consumers heard about meant that OpenSea was easier to find and onboard to. No one except for developers knew about Seaport. (Fair to say Seaport is less important protocol than Uniswap.) Email and the web both have strong protocol branding that's independent of the clients. Same goes for Ethereum, and a lesser degree Solana (in the case of wallets).
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Brock
@runninyeti.eth
The difference is Uniswap is protocol first - many other protocols have been built atop and forked from it. Incentives for Uniswap are at the contract / protocol level This is also true for Seaport - trading NFTs on Blur still leads to revenue for OpenSea ^ in both cases, competitive apps are encouraged because it's net positive for the protocol -> net positive for revenue In Merkle's case, the key metrics seem to be app-level (?). In which case, consumer branding is necessary and competitive apps are a net negative
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Dan Romero
@dwr.eth
> competitive apps are a net negative the key metrics are user-level and users use apps so apps that bring users to the protocol are good for solving the north star issue for the protocol
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