A decentralized application (dApp) is an application built on a decentralized network that combines a smart contract and a frontend user interface. A regular app has backend code running on centralized servers. A "smart contract" is simply a program that runs on a blockchain network.

Hopefully, those videos helped you see some real applications of blockchain. Many dApps are interoperable - meaning they can talk and interact with each other. As a result, dApps will evolve fast. dApps of today may look totally different than those 10 years from now.

Excited stuff. But, you may still be confused on exactly how a dApp works.

That thread is a good primer on how smart contracts work. There are a lot of parallels between regular applications and decentralized applications. Let’s dive deeper!

Now, you should have a pretty good understanding of dApps. They are what users will interact with on web3.

Let’s learn about what you can interact with! First, we will zoom out and get a lay of the land. Then, we will zoom in and see the most popular dApps in web3.

“Web3” is a good all-encompassing term that captures:

Cryptocurrencies: digital gold, stablecoins, & tokens

Smart Contract Computing: Layer 1-2 platforms

Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs): digital ID & property rights, behave like physical things, but with lower storage costs, programmability, and composability.

DeFi: behaves like the financial system, but without middlemen and with programmability and composability.

The Metaverse: the digital commons built in game-like environments

Community Governance (DAOs): decentralized autonomous organizations behave like LLCs, but with more flexibility, speed, and stakeholder ownership and control.

*At least, that is what web3 covers right now. The industry grows and changes FAST. Many of these applications are less than a year old! That means that you can be a part of the next big thing, despite being new to the space.

Each of the above areas can take you down a deep rabbit hole. Go out and explore on your own! For now, we give a more holistic coverage with specific examples.

You can use your wallet for a ton of stuff by connecting with dApps. For example, you can: pay someone, buy an NFT, swap a token, stake on a network, loan/borrow tokens, play games, use decentralized storage, & interact with DAOs.

Let’s start simple.

Not so scary, eh?

The user experience of using a dApp is the same as using a normal app. But, dApps are much more versatile. Let’s look at (& use) some current popular dApps.

What we just said me be very confusing. Learn more here:

Uniswap is an essential dApp. Connect your wallet & give it a try!! Here is the link to use it:

If you’d like to learn more about either of these lending platforms, we have resources for each below:

Check out Aave and Compound’s sites and attach your wallet to them. Familiarze yourself on the user interface and maybe even interact with the protocols :)

To learn more, check out this article:

Go ahead and explore OpenSea using this link! Attach your wallet by clicking the button in the top right corner.

Hope you had some fun exploring around...some exciting projects out there!! Now, let’s recap what we learned.

There is nothing particularly “distributed” about the dApps themselves. They’re normal websites. The “distributedness” refers to where the state and the logic/permissions for updating the state lives: on the blockchain instead of in a “centralized” database.

We learned what at dApp is and how it is used. We covered a holistic view of where web3 is right now. And, you got to interact with some of web3’s most popular dApps! LET’S GO!!!

It is clear that web3 has a lot of current applications & many future implications. But, it still has a lot of problems to solve and growing pains to endure.

We have spent a lot of time praising web3. Let’s take a quick reality check & talk about its current limitations & issues.