Transformers changed AI, hyperscalers will change crypto

For years, crypto has been talking about onboarding the next billion users. There now is a clear path forward.

What changed? The emergence of Hyperscalers in crypto in the past 6 months.

The Crypto Hyperscalers

World

In October 2024, World announced the launch of miniapps. Miniapps are webviews within the WorldApp that are developed by third party developers. World gives app builders access to 25M users. Whilst building on World introduces platform risk, launching on world is straightforward — app builders benefit from access to verified humans and streamlined UX (funded wallets, not transaction fees etc.)

Celo

Just like World, Celo is often underrated as its userbase is mostly composed of noncrypto natives living in developing countries (mostly Africa). Opera Browser’s Minipay stablecoin wallet has >8M MAU. Minipay has miniapps. Celo recently bought OpenPassport and spun it out as Self.xyz. Self is a World competitor that uses passport for identity instead of using biometrics. I expect Self to merge with Minipay to benefit from Opera’s distribution advantage (>100M users) and Self to launch a token to scale its userbase like WLD does for World (this is pure speculation).

Base

Early Febuary, Base announced using Farcaster’s open social graph and revamping Coinbase Wallet to make it HomeBase, the Base superapp. Their pitch to developers is the following: ‘Build miniapps on HomeBase for crypto natives to benefit from Base's distribution'. Base is the largest L2 with 20M MAU, CoinBase Wallet has 10M users and Farcaster’s feed and open social graph should help with discovery of novel apps.

I purposefully decided to leave out Telegram, despite them having the largest userbase and being first to launch miniapps in large part because I’ve not been impressed by any miniapp that’s been built on TG. If you have miniapps I should try DM me.

New apps have always piggybacked on existing apps: Zinga grew through Facebook and Instagram through Twitter. What we’re seeing emerge in crypto is the following:

Hyperscalers are selling blockspace: they need to help App Builders distribute their products for their blockspace to be consumed.
Hyperscalers are all building superapps: centralised gateways to their ecosystem.

Tiago and I started *** because we saw the emergence of new distribution channels that makes an idea which previously was impractical, timely. We’ve voted with our feet — we are building on World.

We believe World is in the best position to become the superapp for the West and the Global South.

We believe the world has yet to wake up to World.