The Rise of Super dApps & Why Web3 Is Finally Growing Up [Part 1]

By Radu, Linx Labs

The Fragmentation Problem

The promise of DeFi has always been compelling. I’m one of those who has been captivated by permissionless finance, global accessibility for anyone with an internet connection, and 24/7 operations that are free from intermediaries and interference. 

For some years now, the reality of DeFi has fallen painfully short of that vision. It’s not because the underlying technology doesn't work (it does), but because the experience of actually using it has been, frankly, terrible (at times).

Let’s play a thought game. Consider what happens when a user wants to accomplish something straightforward in finance. We can use borrowing against their own funds to make a purchase as an example.

In traditional finance, this would probably involve one decent fintech app, a few clicks, and a couple minutes of time. In DeFi circa 2021-2023? You'd need to connect to a lending protocol, deposit, borrow, maybe swap, find an off-ramp, transfer out, convert to fiat, and finally spend. That's four different platforms minimum, each with its own interface, its own learning curve, and its own ways to lose your funds. No hand-holding. No undo button.

I’m sorry to say that it gets worse. Consider one of the most common strategies among experienced DeFi users: leveraged yield farming with liquid staking tokens. 

For example, you hold stETH earning 3% APY and want to amplify that yield through leverage, a conceptually simple goal. 

Here's what that actually looked like: deposit stETH, borrow ETH, stake it, deposit again, borrow again, stake again, round and round, three to five loops until you hit your target leverage. You're bouncing between a lending protocol and a staking provider, repeating the same steps, just to accomplish one thing: "give me leveraged stETH yield.". The fact that products like DeFi Saver exist solely to automate this loop is a clear signal to me that the native UX is broken.

So, that’s the fragmentation problem laid out. Some argue, actually I’ve even argued it myself, that these were just the growing pains and formed an inevitable part of DeFi evolution. Right now, however, this space is old enough and mature enough to outgrow the problem, as I’ll explain (and hopefully convince you).

The Building Blocks Era

In the early days of decentralized finance, specialization made sense. Protocols focused on doing one thing exceptionally well. Uniswap revolutionized token swaps. Aave and Compound pioneered overcollateralized lending. MakerDAO gave us decentralized stablecoins.

The modular approach had its merits. It allowed for rapid innovation within each vertical. It created composability, and the famous "money legos" where one protocol could build on another's primitives. It also distributed risk, so that a failure in one protocol wouldn't necessarily cascade through the entire system. 

There was a fundamental problem with this architecture though. It was designed by developers, for developers.

The building blocks were elegant from an engineering standpoint. In truth though, they were low-level primitives, not complete solutions. They gave users the components to achieve financial goals without actually helping them achieve those goals. 

To put it in context, it was as if the car industry invented excellent engines, transmissions, and wheels separately, then expected consumers to assemble their own cars.

The True Cost of Fragmentation

The consequences of this fragmented landscape have been severe, and they now extend well beyond mere inconvenience.

Friction multiplied for many users (like myself), who found that every hop between protocols meant another transaction to sign, interface to navigate, and opportunity for value leakage through slippage or MEV extraction. Even when L2s began reducing gas costs to near-zero, the sheer number of steps created compounding friction.

This gave us cognitive overhead. Each dApp had its own interface, terminology, quirks, and more to set it apart. That meant users had to maintain mental models for dozens of protocols, remember which wallet they connected where, and track positions across multiple dashboards. For those who used them, it was annoying. For those who didn’t use them, it was unappealing. For most, there were just too many barriers to entry.

When I look back on it now, I can smell the capital inefficiency. We know that when liquidity is scattered across hundreds of protocols on dozens of chains, it fragments into puddles rather than pooling into oceans. Users get worse execution. Markets become less efficient. Unfortunately, the promise of deep and decentralized liquidity remains unrealized.

The Web2 UX Gap

Perhaps the most damning comparison I’ve seen is to the centralized alternatives DeFi claims to displace.

In Web2 fintech, moving from "I want to do something" to "It's done," typically takes maybe one to three clicks. If you’ve ever used PayPal, Wise, or Revolut, you can hold, exchange, and spend multiple currencies from a single interface. There’s also Cash App, which collapses sending, receiving, investing, and banking into one seamless experience. 

Come to think about it, even traditional banks have learned to hide their backend complexity behind intuitive mobile apps.

DeFi, by contrast, has often felt like using the early internet, with command lines, technical jargon, and the ever-present risk of bricking your finances through a mistyped address. That’s not really good enough or aligned with the ambitions of the industry.

This gap is an existential problem for mainstream adoption.

The 20 or so million active DeFi wallets globally represent a fraction of the potential user base. Research consistently shows that UX improvements in traditional apps yield returns of 100x or more on investment. 

DeFi has left this value on the table while wondering why adoption hasn't accelerated. Many builders, fortunately, have taken notice.

Why Now? The Inflection Point

Several converging forces made 2024-2025 the moment when fragmentation became unsustainable.

Institutional entry, where traditional finance began increasingly incorporating DeFi, pushed standards upwards. For example, institutional lending via whitelisted pools surpassed $9.3 billion in 2025. Therefore, institutions simply won't accept interfaces that feel like alpha software.

Then there’s the multi-chain reality. The ecosystem has expanded from a handful of networks to dozens of competing chains, each with its own liquidity pools and user bases. Users must now navigate multiple protocols across multiple chains, adding bridging complexity on top of everything else. The fragmentation has compounded, for better or worse.

Competitive pressure adds another dimension. DeFi represents less than 10% of Web3's unique active users, while still generating over 240 million transactions each week. From my perspective, that’s a pretty blatant mismatch between value created and users captured. 

The protocols that can convert complexity into simplicity will win the next wave of adoption. I’m convinced everyone already knows this, but delivering it is easier said than done. Fortunately, smart wallets, chain abstraction, and improved interoperability protocols have finally made it possible to build seamless experiences that weren't technically feasible even two years ago.

The Case for Consolidation

The market has spoken, and its verdict is clear: fragmentation is a bug, not a feature.

Here's the thing though, users just want to do things. Earn. Borrow. Spend. They shouldn't need to care which protocol handles their collateral or how many swaps happen under the hood. If using DeFi feels like work, it's not ready for mainstream audiences.

This, dear reader, is the thesis behind the rise of super dApps. 

These super dApps are applications that deliver complete user journeys rather than isolated primitives. The implementation can vary, of course. Expect to see some super dApps act as abstraction layers, orchestrating multiple third-party protocols behind a unified interface. Others may take a vertically integrated approach, building proprietary protocols designed from the ground up to work together seamlessly.

Both models solve the same problem. The user taps "Earn" or "Borrow" and the complexity disappears. At least, it should. What matters most here is that the user gets a unified experience, so ultimately there’s just one interface, one mental model, and one place to manage their financial life on-chain.

The building blocks era gave us the components, but the super dApp era will be about assembling them into complete solutions that can actually serve real users with real needs.

In Part 2, we'll explore what makes a true super dApp, and how Linx App is building a vertically integrated DeFi experience on Alephium. We are combining swapping, lending, and yield generation into a single interface where users can tap to achieve their goals, not to execute transactions.