Being the first decentralized application to launch on the Ethereum network on October 27, 2015, Augur promised the deliver a market prediction platform and raised around $5 million from selling 8.8 mln REP tokens to investors.
At the peak of the 2017 bull run, the price of the token soared from its ICO price of $0.6 to $111, and this was seven months before the project finally launched its prediction platform in July 2018.
Fast forward to the present, Augur is currently trading around $16.2 per token with a market cap of $178.5 million and a comfortable 46th place ranking among other top cryptocurrencies according to data from CoinMarketCap.
Notably, though, while the market gave Augur (REP) its value before the launch of its prediction platform, statistics indicate the number of people using the product significantly outweighs its market valuation, albeit a trait shared by some other early crypto projects.
According to data from DappRadar, Augur’s prediction platform had only 115 users in the past seven days with 252 transactions and an ETH balance of 2600 ETH (appr. $580,680). A perhaps even more distressing stat is that the platform had only three users on February 10, with a mere 15.5 ETH (appr. $3545) volume traded.
One may argue that the low adoption of decentralized applications since the concept came to limelight is one of the reasons by Augur’s rather poor statistics. However, the dApp’s #126 rank on Dappradar, clearly shows it has fallen behind recent projects, with leaders on the day EOS Dynasty and My CryptoHeroes boasting 4.7k and 3.4k users respectively.
For the sake of market numbers, a recent tweet by Jeff Dorman, CIO of an investment firm, Arca, comes into focus:
$REP trades at $9.25mm/user & 300x total economic activity (2800 ETH). Most absurd valuation in crypto.
At least other crazy token market caps with unproven projects have a a minuscule chance of growing into its valuation. Augur has proven for 5 years that no one will use it.
— Jeff Dorman, CFA (@jdorman81) February 11, 2020
Putting the numbers into perspective shows that the user adoption rate for Augur’s platform is not a determinant for the token’s value; otherwise, it would be no way near among the leading cryptocurrencies.
On the other hand, early listing across several top crypto exchanges, launching near the start of a bull market, and a five-year existence, are more compelling reasons to explain Augur’s (REP) position among top cryptocurrencies, even though its primary product may never take-off.
