The NEAR ecosystem has seen tremendous growth and change over the past 2 years. While the core NEAR protocol and developer tools continue to mature, most of the new user growth has concentrated in a handful of viral applications like Sweat and PlayEmber.

Sweat exploded onto the scene in late 2022, gaining over 3 million total users seemingly overnight. This fitness app attracted users in waves, with hundreds of thousands of new users per week at its peak growth. Despite being built on NEAR for only 1.5 years, Sweat quickly became the top application by user count.

PlayEmber replicated this growth in miniature in mid-2023, jumping to #2 in users with growth of over 700k in a matter of months. These applications attracted users independently of NEAR's lifespan and brand, indicating viral growth and niche product-market fit rather than ecosystem maturity.

In contrast, core NEAR protocols like NEAR Wallet and utility tokens have seen steadier, slower growth over years rather than months. Workhorse applications like Ref Finance and Paras NFT Marketplace have built steadily growing user bases over time.

While flashy apps can burst onto the scene, durable utilities like exchanges and stablecoins continue to rank highly in usage. User retention remains concentrated in a handful of "daily use" applications whereas experimentation happens across many niche protocols.

This combination of viral growth apps and stable utility protocols indicates an ecosystem still searching for the killer use case but building fundamental infrastructure. NEAR has proven it can sustain both long-term projects and overnight sensations. But major adoption still awaits discovery of that one essential application. For now, NEAR hosts a flourishing garden of innovations waiting for the right formula to achieve mass appeal.

NEAR Users per Project Challenge