A while back, I wrote about why your React app feels slow, but lately, I’ve seen the same performance issues pop up again - this time in Web3 apps.
Let’s break down why your dApp feels slow and what you can do to fix it.
🐢 1. Slow or Unreliable RPC Endpoints
Your dApp depends on an RPC to read from the blockchain. If it’s overloaded, rate-limited, or slow. Your entire app suffers.
Fixes:
- Use a premium or dedicated provider (e.g. Alchemy, QuickNode, Infura Pro)
- Implement fallback RPCs
- Cache read calls locally or in a lightweight backend
- For static content (token names, prices), index it off-chain
🛑 2. Blocking Wallet Prompts
You click a button. Nothing happens. Why? Because the wallet modal hasn’t popped up yet. Users wait. Or worse - they click again.
Fixes:
- Preload the wallet before the action (e.g., request accounts on page load)
- Give instant UI feedback before wallet interaction (e.g., “Waiting for signature…”)
- Debounce interaction buttons to avoid double-click spam
📦 3. Not Using a GraphQL Indexer
If your app relies on reading on-chain events, but you’re querying them live via RPC, you're doing it wrong.
Fixes:
- Use The Graph or a custom indexer
- Cache indexed data in Redis/Postgres
- Fetch only what you need, reduce payload size
💥 4. Unbatched Read Calls
Calling multiple contract.methods.xyz().call() one-by-one?
You’re adding network latency to every step.
Fixes:
- Use multicall contracts to batch reads
- Group calls into fewer transactions
- When possible, move reads off-chain if they don’t need real-time accuracy
🧠 5. Overengineering for Edge Cases
Every feature doesn’t need to be on-chain.
If your UX relies on confirming gasless writes, bridges, token checks, etc, simplify.
Fixes:
- Ask: “Can this logic live off-chain?”
- Defer optional confirmations
- Show loading states that don’t block the user’s journey
Conclusion
Web3 UX is still young , but that doesn’t mean it has to be clunky. If your app feels slow, don’t blame the chain.
Start with your RPC stack, read patterns, and UI logic. Sometimes, shaving 500ms off a wallet prompt or caching one RPC call is all it takes to feel "fast."
Top comments (2)
This is spot on, so many Web3 apps feel slow, not because of the blockchain itself, but because of how they're wired to interact with it. RPC bottlenecks, unbatched reads, and wallet UX all add up.
One thing we’ve been exploring with haveto.com is how shifting more logic directly on-chain (including AI workloads) can reduce the dependency on external infrastructure altogether. When the base layer is built to scale and handles compute natively, a lot of these issues start to disappear.
Totally agree, Web3 doesn’t have to be clunky. It just needs better architecture...
It's well said. Thank you for the comment.