By Sandra Quinn

A Decentralised Application, otherwise known as a DApp, is an app run by multiple users on a decentralised network with trustless protocols. They are intrinsically designed to avoid being felled by a single point of failure and typically have tokens to reward users for providing the computing power.

These are very much still coming into their own at the moment, but mark my words – they will change the world of blockchain and soon.

According to www.dappradar.com, which provides insights and information on existing DApps, the top five games were at the time of writing; Etheremon, Blockchain Cuties, CryptoKitties, 0xUniverse and Gods Unchained TCG. While these are the top games, the top ranking one still only boasts 502 users in the past 24 hours, with number five coming in at just 189 users in the same timeframe.

Likewise, the top five exchanges are IDEX, ForkDelta, The Token Store, LocalEthereum and Bancor with the users for IDEX coming in at 1,358 and Bancor having 166 users in a 24-hour period.

As you can probably already deduce, the figures for the usership of these DApps are paltry at best, as they are very much a trend, which is still catching on.

This is largely due to the vast majority of people who understand the blockchain, but cannot actually gain access to it or use the decentralised apps on it.

An understanding of the blockchain underpins an understanding of DApps, which explains the user figures to some extent.

Blockgeeks Inc run dedicated courses on DApps and Ethereum and have described DApps as being “resilient, transparent and incentivised application [which] will prove themselves to the world by remapping the technological landscape”.

They argue that the introduction of DApps to the tech world offers a paradigm shift to the way that software models are viewed.

For those new to the world of DApps and still trying to wrap their heads around the idea, these are some of the common features;

  • Any changes to DApps are decided on by a consensus by the majority of users.
  • Those involved must agree on a cryptographic algorithm to show proof of value (like a Proof of Work or Proof of Stake).
  • Users are awarded for use with crypto tokens.
  • All records are stored in public and can be accessed by anyone to avoid the pitfalls of centralisation.

Watch this space for what DApps can bring to the future tech world.