dApps - What are they?

dApps - What are they?

dApps stands for "decentralized applications" and in this article you will get a clear explanation of what they are and what developments they will bring about.

What are dApps?

Decentralized applications can be thought of as the software of the blockchain.We now know software programs such as Microsoft Word, McAfee virus scanner and, for example, the game FIFA 2021. Software is actually a package of data that gives the computer instructions for how it should work.The computer software just mentioned is created by centralized companies. People from the outside cannot see how these are made and cannot simply collaborate on them. With the software, or dApps, for the blockchain, this is possible.dApps are open-source, which means that anyone can participate in the development of the applications. Furthermore, everyone can see how the app was created and people from all over the world can copy and use the applications.The dApps can mean a lot to us in the future. Here below are some examples:Everyone has a smartphone these days and it is mostly not used throughout the day. A dApp could make it possible to make some of the unused capacity available to serve companies.Advertisements regularly come along on social media and a company like Facebook makes tons of money from this. In the world of blockchain, it becomes possible for people like you and me to make money from viewing ads. This shifts the power of such a large company to the people themselves.Uber has introduced the beautiful concept where anyone with a car can work as a cab. However, not all the money goes to the cab driver but also a part goes to Uber. With dApps it becomes possible to make payments directly from the passenger to the driver without the need for a third party like Uber. This can both drive down fare prices and increase revenue for the driver.

Bitcoin, the very first dApp

You can use the blockchain for an infinite number of purposes and Bitcoin was programmed specifically to act as a payment application. They wanted to create a payment system that would remove the centralization and censorship of today. To do this, they built the decentralized application Bitcoin that can do transactions without intermediaries or central authorities.

dApps based on Ethereum

Ethereum is considered the mother of decentralized applications. There are an awful lot of applications being built on this blockchain and some well-known ones are Golem, Aragon and Status.Golem makes it possible to make unused computer capacity available to people who can really use it.Aragon wants to get autonomous, decentralized companies on the blockchain so that a company no longer belongs to a group of individuals, but to everyone who contributes to it.Status makes it possible with their own application to access all of Ethereum's decentralized applications from your smartphone.

Brickken's dApp

Brickken makes it possible for investors and promoters to be connected without intermediaries, through its dApp, which is a decentralized protocol living on chain, fueled by its native utility token $BKN, with incentives schemes to maintain balance in the network.

Differences between centralized and decentralized

Decentralized ApplicationsCentralized ApplicationsAdvertisementsPeople have control over whether or not they share their data. If they want to make money with it they can sell it directly to an advertiser instead of a company like Facebook making money off of it.Companies collect data from individuals without being aware of it and make tons of money from it.CensureDecentralized applications operate across a lot of nodes, making it difficult for a government to ban websites.Governments can require hosting services to block certain websites.TrustNobody can change data on their own, this is controlled by all the nodes in the network. It is a system where we don't have to trust anyone. The cryptography ensures that everything runs smoothly.An employee of a central authority can have wrong intentions and make changes to the stored data. You already have to be able to trust your bank 100% and how do you know you can?CrashThe database is hosted by all nodes in the network. If a few nodes leave the network, the blockchain can still continue to work without problems. This makes you a lot less vulnerable than with central databases.Data is stored on one central database. When this crashes you have a big chance that all data is gone. Of course you can have a backup but, practice shows that few companies do this accurately.HackersThe data is spread across all nodes and this makes you less vulnerable to hacker attacks.All data is stored on one server. This makes it an easy target for hackers.Front End UIYou can't tell from the outside if an application is decentralized or centralized. Both are written in HTML/CSS/JS.Written in HTML/CSS/JS.BackendThe difference is in the backend, in decentralized applications this is based on a blockchain, such as Ethereum.The backend is written in Rails/Django/NodeJS, etc.

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