With the growing popularity of cryptocurrencies, decentralized applications (dApps) are becoming more and more popular. But their existence is much older than cryptocurrencies and dates back to the 1990s, the world of free apps and peer-to-peer (P2P) apps. Many services and applications, from finance to entertainment, have relied on this model of work.
How does the dApp work?
Standard web apps like Twitter or YouTube are run by companies that have full rights over them and determine what users can and cannot do there.
DApps, on the other hand, are applications, services, and programs that use a blockchain or peer-to-peer network instead of a traditional server. This feature puts them outside the control that a government or private actor can exert on a central infrastructure.
Today, DApps are mostly deployed using the Ethereum blockchain or any other blockchain with sufficient computing power. These applications are always open source, meaning anyone can refer to the code that created them and be taken by anyone at their leisure.
From a visual and functional point of view, DApps are not much different from traditional applications, “FrontEnd” is usually developed with the trio of HTML, CSS, Javascript in mind, while images and the rest of the files can be stored in decentralized storage such as IPFS or Swarm. Also, many cloneWeb have decentralized networks of big names.
What are the Differences from Other Applications?
The real difference lies in infrastructure. All transactions performed in a decentralized application are stored on the blockchain, making each and every action indelible.
For example, a (dApp) decentralized version of Twitter would not face censorship, be it tweet deletion or account suspension. Similarly, the absence of a hub means that a hacker cannot or will have great difficulty attacking a dApp.
