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What sustainable adoption means
A burst of sign-ups, trading activity or reward-driven visits is not the same as people returning to use a product. To assess adoption, distinguish between attention and recurring activity: what users do, how often they return, and whether they use the service for its intended purpose.
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That distinction matters because token demand or a rising token price can make a project look popular without showing that its underlying service has become useful in everyday life. In its 2025 Annual Economic Report, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) says that “unbacked cryptoassets are not widely used for payments nor do they serve as a unit of account.” The finding concerns unbacked cryptoassets, not every token, stablecoin or blockchain application.
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Rewards can attract users without creating a reason to return
Tokens can give people an immediate reason to try an application. But the incentive that brings someone in may not be the benefit that keeps them there. If the service has little value once rewards change or token prices fall, users may have less reason to return.
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Onchain Research Team’s 2025 article discusses play-to-earn and move-to-earn projects as examples in which engagement weakened when token rewards or values declined. It argues that these applications need utility that remains meaningful without token appreciation. This is an industry publisher’s case analysis, not a universal estimate of what causes users to leave.
Onchain also reports that 37.08% of surveyed users named financial incentives as their primary motivation for using Web3 apps. The survey included 1,005 Web3 users and 660 founders and business executives building consumer-facing blockchain applications. That percentage describes Onchain’s respondents; the available account does not establish that they represent all crypto users.
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Using a crypto app can demand unfamiliar work
Some Web3 consumer apps ask a new user to set up a wallet, manage private keys, interpret transaction approvals and deal with fees that may be hard to predict. Each task adds effort or responsibility before the user reaches the service itself. Onchain identifies wallet setup, key management and unpredictable transaction fees as barriers, but their effect will vary across wallets, networks and applications.
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A smoother interface can reduce some friction, but it cannot by itself establish that a product solves a recurring problem or that users trust it with their assets. Projects need to consider the whole journey: what a person must understand, what they must approve, what a transaction will cost and what happens if something goes wrong.
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- Tap once to manage your entire crypto wallet across 90 blockchains - no USB cables or Bluetooth, no batteries, no setup. Access 14,100+ coins & tokens, DeFi, NFTs, and staking instantly from your phone
- Smart backup: Use your second Tangem Wallet as your Backup keys with end‑to‑end encryption; no more papers, pictures. If one card is lost, the remaining can still restore full access, with an optional seed phrase available for advanced users.
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Why trust and protection affect adoption
People assessing a crypto service must consider not only the technology but also the organizations and processes around it: who controls assets or infrastructure, how reliably the service operates, and what recourse exists after a failure. The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), in a 2023 report on crypto-asset oversight, documented consumer and investor risks including volatility, fraud and platform failures. It also described how gaps in oversight can expose users to manipulation, while weaknesses in stablecoin reserve standards and disclosure can threaten redemptions.
Those findings concern U.S. oversight and should not be treated as a description of the law everywhere or as a complete statement of current U.S. law. The GAO page records that a U.S. stablecoin oversight framework passed in July 2025; it also lists its matter concerning oversight of nonsecurity spot markets as open in a later status update. Rules and protections vary by jurisdiction and can change, so a project’s legal and consumer-protection position needs to be assessed for the places where it operates.
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Technical and regulatory fit can limit a promising product
A product can be useful in principle yet difficult to operate at the scale or in the settings its users need. UNCTAD’s 2021 publication on blockchain and sustainable development identifies scalability, privacy concerns, uncertain regulatory standards and difficulty integrating blockchain with existing applications as potential constraints.
These factors can compound one another. For example, a project may need to connect to established services while also meeting users’ expectations around privacy and performance. UNCTAD’s publication identifies broad categories of challenge; it does not rank them for a specific project or establish the current rules in any jurisdiction.
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How to diagnose the adoption problem
Before deciding that a project needs more incentives, a new feature or a different network, identify what its adoption figures actually measure. The questions below help separate a weak value proposition from onboarding, trust or operating constraints.
| Dimension | Ask | What to examine |
|---|---|---|
| User value | What recurring problem does the product solve, and would users return without rewards or token-price gains? | Whether the service still offers a worthwhile experience when incentives change. Onchain’s 2025 article discusses this distinction through play-to-earn and move-to-earn cases. |
| Onboarding | What must a new user learn, install, manage or approve before they can use the service? | Wallet setup, private-key management, transaction approvals and fee uncertainty, identified as barriers by Onchain. |
| Trust and risk | Who controls assets or infrastructure, what can fail, and what protection or recourse is available? | Custody and operational reliability, alongside the risks and U.S. oversight gaps described by GAO in its 2023 report and subsequent page updates. |
| Operational fit | Can the product meet its needs for scale, privacy and integration while complying with relevant local rules? | Potential constraints identified by UNCTAD in 2021; current legal requirements must be checked for the relevant jurisdiction. |
| Evidence of use | Do the numbers show trading, sign-ups, active use, retention or actual payment and service activity? | Whether the metric reflects the product’s intended use. BIS’s assessment of unbacked cryptoassets cautions against treating market activity as ordinary payment use. |
These are diagnostic dimensions, not a universal ranking. The sources address different populations and questions: an industry survey and case analysis, a monetary and financial-system assessment, U.S. oversight findings, and a broad UN publication. They do not establish which barrier is most important across all projects, sectors or regions.
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