The Long Tail of Decentralized Software by Marisa Rowland

We all know Anderson’s theory of the Long Tail, but how does it apply to dApps? Web3 is proof of an economy “shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of ‘hits’ (mainstream products and markets) at the head of the demand curve and toward a huge number of niches in the tail.” Data enables these niche markets. However, modern “dApps” have big problems related to data. Not everything can be built on the blockchain: it's expensive and slow. And since there’s nowhere to put personal state that shouldn’t live on a blockchain, they either store data locally which leads to poor UX or worse on a central server. What will enable the long tail of Web3 dApps? Marisa Rowland