Dependencies

Messari just released their annual Crypto Theses for 2024. This year’s report included a chart from a16z’s State of Crypto 2023 showing npm downloads for three of the leading packages used by decentralized apps going up and to the right, reaching all time highs in late 2023. The report includes the following quote: “If I could invest blindly into crypto based on a single chart, it’s this one.”

There’s a lot to love about this take, but one big problem: downloads are a terrible metric for monitoring ecosystem growth.