What are Decentralized applications?.

Let’s jump into What are Decentralized Applications?

I’m pretty sure, you are able to create a mind map of decentralized applications, after reading my previous article. I’m I, right?

Yeah, you are also!

Cool! Let’s see in-depth.

Decentralized applications are applications where both data and functionality(business logic) reside on multiple servers that are not owned and managed by a single entity. It means, in the case of decentralized applications, all servers act like peers and these servers are not managed by any single entity.

What is this actually? Let’s try to understand using a simple diagram.

As you can see in the above diagram, all computers(servers) are interlinked with each other. There is no central server. These servers are also called the Peers network. Suppose if a new computer(server) is added into this application(network), again, it will distribute the data with all networks, and so on.

Still not able to understand?

I think all of you are aware of Bitcoin, Bitcoin is an example of a decentralized network.

But, how?

Bitcoin works on a Peer-to-Peer(P2P) network, or we can say, it works on a decentralized application model. Because there is no central server/database in bitcoin. It works on the blockchain network. As you know, blockchain is a distributed ledger, which means, when an application is made on this network, it must be decentralized(It may be public or private). All participants(nodes) on the bitcoin network can see other participants’ data(in an encrypted way), and when a new participant joins, his/her data also be shared with all other participants. Each of these participating servers is controlled by participants of the network. Similarly, the same copy of the application’s business logic(smart contract) resides and executes on servers that run the bitcoin network.

You might have a question, why do we need a decentralized application? Right?

Let’s see why we need…

Suppose, if you want to build an application, where every user of the application can access all information about the business process to establish trust. let’s say, I want to create a Fish Delivery application that can help Restaurants and their customer.

How it will help restaurants?

As you already know, decentralized applications are immutable in nature, you can’t change any data once it is added. Let’s say the restaurant wants to know, where the fish are coming from? or is it fresh or not? or who is the seller of this fish? or what’s the temp of the fish at the time of travel? etc… We can add all details into our fish delivery application like, when the fish was caught, who is the seller, what’s the fish temperature(we can add this info from the fish delivery vehicle), and all information we can add about the fish. And, once it is added, no one can modify/delete this data.

In this way, restaurants can verify the fish data with the help of the fish delivery application. It will help restaurants to build trust with the customers.

By Saroj