A ‘super app’ can be Web3’s superpower

Twitter version (v)2, the so-called “super app”, is … never going to happen. But by putting a dogecoin avatar on the Twitter site, Elon Musk at least made a move in the right direction.

The idea of ​​a super app is more steam than reality. There have been many failed attempts. Partial examples exist in Southeast Asia and in Apple’s App Store on the iPhone – but the only fully-fledged “app for everything” is WeChat, and its circumstances as one of the most popular apps in China are unique.

Galen Moore is content manager at Axelar, which builds interoperable Web3 infrastructure.

To build Twitter into something like WeChat, Musk has to rebuild Twitter — and essentially every service that’s been built on the internet since 2004 because Big Tech’s “walled gardens” don’t always communicate.

The only way to build a super app is with decentralized applications, also known as dapps. These open source applications are open in a way that not only liberates computer code, but liberates entire networks of Internet participants.

In short, developers on the decentralized web don’t just benefit composable software functionsi.e. blocks of code that are easy to integrate into other open source projects, but also composable network effects. It is the overall value the participants add to a network, which can be snapped in like a Lego piece.

Network effects are at the heart of many of the most valuable technology companies in the world: Facebook, Google and Apple at the top; Airbnb, PayPal and Uber a level or two below, but just as impressive. The line between these successes and the many technological mediocrities is often drawn between those who have network effects and those who do not.

It’s easy to see why the “network effect moat” is a staple of pitch decks. With network effects, the greater the effect, the wider the moat. Juggernaut companies on the US consumer web have become very good at this kind of logic, and they have no incentive to lower the drawbridge for the likes of Twitter—or almost anyone else.

Almost, because there is one notable exception—the Apple-Google nexus of convenience that puts Google search across all Apple devices. Apple is the largest manufacturer of consumer technology hardware; Google is perhaps the most important consumer web company. That relationship, which regulators have targeted, is worth billions to both companies.

The exceptions that are Apple and Google prove the rule: No super apps can be created in this mercantilist Internet economy where companies hoard networks like colonial powers hoard precious metals.

In a hearing before Congress last month, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew said: “It is our commitment to this committee and to all our users that we will keep [TikTok] free from any manipulation by any government.” Imagine how much easier Chew’s job would be if he could prove it cryptographically.

The US Justice Department is stepping up antitrust enforcement against both Apple and Google, separate from its crackdown on the two companies’ long-standing search partnership. Imagine the Capitol Hill hearings in an unlikely scenario where—through acquisition or sheer ingenuity—a Silicon Valley giant developed a super app that could span multiple verticals.

WeChat, meanwhile, is in a different kind of hot seat — tied closely to the Beijing government and used by it for censorship and surveillance, not to mention public service announcements. It’s ubiquitous and, for users, important: Being banned from WeChat is sometimes compared to being cut off from a public utility.

Without the help of a strong state, it’s hard to imagine an application having the kind of power—or influence—required to force superapp integration. And users who love privacy and freedom of expression will have the right to question the assumptions of trust that come with such a public-private information partnership.

The decentralized web (Web3) is something else: it is unauthorized. If one project provides an app store and another provides search, a third developer can integrate their features into a new app without negotiating or asking for permission at all. One person’s finished product is another’s Lego; the potential combinations are not limited by moats or regulators.

There are many examples of this. Ethereum has built infrastructure that supports this kind of composability among Ethereum dapps. Ethereum dapps can make use of Uniswap’s contracts for liquidity or call Aragon’s contracts for on-chain governance. No public serving is required.

Not surprisingly, dapps also bundle features into unified offerings in the Cosmos ecosystem. Osmosis, for example, has made it easy for other dapps to tap into its on-chain markets, much like dapps use Uniswap on Ethereum.

We are now starting to see dapps composing features across multiple ecosystems. Squid is an example: Built on Axelar, Squid is a decentralized exchange (DEX) that leverages liquidity on other DEXs on many chains to facilitate off-chain switching.

None of these apps are “super apps”. However, they all have one thing in common: the building blocks of Web3 open source that together create something greater than the sum of its parts. They are compose with the network effects built by other internet applications.

This is a function of the decentralized network that can be called composable network effects. In today’s applications, it often takes the form of liquidity, i.e. networks of buyers and sellers. But composable network effects exist at every layer of Web3. Even something as basic as the security of Ethereum is a composable network effect, accessible to application-layer compositions.

This is not to suggest that anyone should try to build so-called super apps in Web3. It seems a bit early for that. But this quality of composable network effects will continue to attract developers, and their work will eventually lead to applications that would not have been possible on the Internet in 2004.

Thanks to 0xPostman for providing feedback on this article, and for writing original post that inspired it.