You're reading from Blockchain Quick Reference

Product typeBook

Published inAug 2018

Reading LevelIntermediate

PublisherPackt

ISBN-139781788995788

Edition1st Edition

Languages

Solidity

Tools

Ethereum

Concepts

Blockchain

Authors (4):

Mariko Amekodommo

Brenn Hill

Samanyu Chopra

Paul Valencourt

View More author details

Decentralized Applications

Decentralized Applications (DApps) are applications that run across a decentralized network and are not owned or controlled by a centralized authority. They differ from distributed applications primarily in terms of ownership. A distributed application may run on thousands of computers, but those computers and the management of the software running on them are controlled by a central authority—Amazon, Microsoft, and so on. A decentralized application runs on what is typically a peer-to-peer network and is designed in such a way that no one person or organization can control the functioning of the application. A decentralized application does not require a blockchain. There were multiple decentralized applications before blockchain: BitTorrent, Tor, and Mastodon are all decentralized applications that exist without the use of a blockchain.

In this...

What makes an application decentralized

Earlier in this book, we discussed distributed versus decentralized systems. A distributed system is one that is made up of a number of computers, with the work of the system distributed across all of these machines. Typically, the computers in a distributed network are placed in different geographical regions to protect the system from outages such as power failures, natural disasters, or military events. A decentralized network is not only distributed geographically, but also in terms of authority and control. A distributed system such as the Amazon cloud can be worldwide in scope but still under the control of a central authority. A decentralized system has no central authority.

Defining a decentralized application

...

Major decentralized blockchain applications

It is assumed the reader of this book may be contemplating launching their own decentralized application project or contributing to an existing one. When building new decentralized applications, it is important to be aware of what already exists so that your application can take advantage of the existing functionality. There are a number of existing decentralized applications that are running and in production and that have already undergone substantial development. In general, these applications provide services to help other decentralized applications flourish. In addition, these applications are all open source. If you evaluate one of these projects and find it is missing something, substantially less effort is likely required to either contribute to or for existing functionality.

...

Summary

You should now understand the difference between a decentralized application and a distributed application. A distributed application is one that is spread across many servers and systems, and ideally, the computers involved are also spread across multiple geographic regions for purposes of backup, processing, and availability. A DApp is one in which no single company, person, or group has control over the operation of the application.

While there are many blockchain applications coming to market, not all of them are truly decentralized. In many cases, these applications are merely distributed differently than prior applications by piggybacking on a public blockchain network. If a company or a few key users still control the operation and function of an application, then that application is not truly decentralized, even if it runs on a decentralized network.

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Authors (4)

Mariko Amekodommo

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