Decentralized applications or DApps are a great part of blockchain technology that theoretically may conquer the application market as soon as blockchain integrates into our everyday life.

Here are several things you need to know about DApps before you step into the future with us.

Let’s go.

What is a DApp?

The main word in blockchain is decentralization

DApp is the same thing as your ordinary (centralized) application from App Store or Google Play, except DApp is a decentralized application built on blockchain. As it is built on blockchain, it cannot be controlled by any single person or entity. A decentralized application runs on a peer-to-peer (P2P) network of computers that means DApp is an omnipresent thing that is everywhere and nowhere at the same time (in your computer or smartphone, not behind you). DApp connects users and providers without laying on the third party. If there were an Instagram or Facebook DApp, nobody in the world could delete or edit your posts and pictures.

Impressive, isn’t it?

The Difference between Smart Contracts and DApps

Smart contract plays the role of a connector in decentralized applications

One of the most popular questions is: what is the difference between these two “blockchain things?”

Smart contract is an important part of a decentralized application. It is a protocol in a form of code. Smart Contract is an entity which allows you to cooperate with blockchain.

Let’s take a look, how ordinary (centralized) website works in comparison with decentralized one.

Here are some terms you need to know:

■ Frontend – what you can see when you enter the site (the whole interface) Backend – the “brain”, the logic, the code that allows you to see the frontend

■ Traditional (centralized) websites operate this way: frontend –– API (grabs your personal information) –– database.

While decentralized applications interact differently: frontend –– smart contracts –– blockchain.

Types of DApps

Three types

The Ethereum network was the first blockchain that started to use smart contracts in DApps back in 2013. So it would be fair to consider Ethereum as an authority in the smart contract matter. Let’s take a look at the Ethereum’s whitepaper that derives three types of decentralized applications (with examples).

■ Financial applications

Gambling, gaming, decentralized exchanges (DEXs), and any other decentralized applications that need some ETH, BTC, TRX (or any other cryptocurrency, sub-currency, etc.) to interact with a DApp.

e.g. CryptoKitties, TRONBet, Blockchain Cuties, IDEX, etc.

■ Semi-financial applications

Such decentralized applications include financial part but mostly oriented on a heavy non-monetary side.

A perfect example is self-enforcing bounties for solutions to computational problems.

■ Not financial at all

These are DApps that don’t include any kind of money transactions. It can be a DApp for fair elections or some kind of blockchain-based medical application that allows you to share medical data record with doctors at any part of the world. West Virginia became the first U.S. state that held blockchain elections last year.

Originally decentralized applications were a prerogative of the Ethereum blockchain. We all remember the time when 15% of all Ethereum transactions were CryptoKitties purchases. Today there are many other blockchains that offer to build decentralized applications such as TRON, EOS, NEO, Cardano, etc. To attract DApp developers and to enhance an ecosystem of the network some blockchain teams launch scholarships, funds, and rewards.

The Benefits of DApps

Today’s future.

Having great potential, decentralized applications can really help to solve some world’s issues. Despite gambling and gaming DApps, there are decentralized exchanges (DEXs) that make trading fair and clear; decentralized news portals that provide you with accurate and censor-free news, etc. One of the most amazing things about blockchain in general and DApp in particular is that your decentralized application could work properly until there would be the last computer on Earth. Isn’t it fascinating?

We hope this basic information helps you to understand the meaning and purpose of DApps. Personally, we strongly believe that decentralized technology is going to be a major technology in the nearest future. New Internet? Perhaps. It’s gonna be something very extraordinary, innovative and decentralized.