In the third quarter of 2024, decentralized applications (dApps) saw a remarkable 70% increase in daily unique active wallets (UAW), reaching a record high of 17.2 million.

This surge in UAWs was largely driven by applications related to artificial intelligence (AI), which experienced a 71% growth, averaging nearly 4.3 million daily UAWs.

Key players in the AI DApp sector included the Data Intelligence Network (DIN), which launched in April 2024 and achieved 1 million daily UAWs, and Alaya AI, which maintained stable activity with 100,000 wallets over the last 90 days.

In the NFT space, OpenSea rebounded to become the dominant platform, achieving $570 million in trading volume and leading in both sales and active traders.

However, the NFT market overall faced a significant downturn, with trading volume plunging by 60% to $1.6 billion and NFT sales decreasing by 23% to 11.5 million.

In contrast, decentralized finance (DeFi) applications saw a decline, with total value locked (TVL) dropping from $168 billion to $160 billion, including a 20% decrease in Ethereum's TVL to $95 billion.

By the end of September 2024, the total value locked in the DeFi ecosystem had settled at nearly $133 billion, reflecting a 12% drop.

Competitors in the NFT space, such as Blur and Magic Eden, experienced sharp declines, with Blur's trading volume decreasing by 78% due to the end of airdrop incentives.

Despite its dominance, the gaming sector's share of the dApp market slightly declined from 28% to 26% as users began exploring more innovative applications.

Decentralized exchanges (DEX) like Raydium and Uniswap saw significant user growth, largely driven by memecoin trading, despite a decrease in total value locked.

Layer-1 blockchains Sui and Aptos emerged as top performers, each recording a 78% increase in TVL, reaching $1.6 billion and $1.3 billion, respectively.

Jupiter Exchange also contributed to DEX activity with 216,000 daily UAW, becoming the third-largest DeFi application by user engagement.