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Discussion on: dApps / Web3 - Help me finally understand / ELI5!

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nombrekeff profile image
Keff • Edited

I'm on the same page, I don't get it. Even though I've worked with, or around, blockchain and cryptos for 5 years I still don't get the point of dApps.

I liked the point in energy consumption, though I don't know if it will be that much more (I haven't researched that at all). Another interesting point is that the development process for dApps is quite crap (at least the last time I tried it), they are more complex than regular apps, they're slow and kinda complex to maintain.

Little side story, I worked on a dApp a few years back. I was in charge of creating the POC for a decentralized social network, which is still alive. My initial implementation was a desktop app (we wanted it to be as decentralized as possible) and was run on a custom fork of bitcoin at the time (bad idea as transactions could not store more than 1kb of data if I recall correctly). We later switched to some other custom blockchain fork to support more data, but that's another story. It took me around 3 months to get the POC working, and after that, I dropped from the project as I did not enjoy the process whatsoever, and other people hopped in.

After working on that for some time, they realized that the desktop app was not ideal as updating it was not that easy, it was not practical and people would rather not download an app. So they decided to make it a website, somewhat centralizing it and returning to what we wanted to avoid. What I'm trying to get to is, that in theory, dApps sound great, but at some point, they must be somewhat centralized to make it more practical, easier for users, and for the developers to manage the app.

I haven't been following this stuff for a couple of years, so things might've changed since then, please correct me if that's the case.

Hope that makes some sense, I don't like talking about this as I have a bit of PTSD from my time working on that app xD

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grahamthedev profile image
GrahamTheDev

Interesting to have this perspective on it! It worries me even more that someone who has given it a "proper go" found it so difficult, but I do believe it is evolving quickly so would hopefully be easier now.

It is the fundamentals part that I can't get, you mentioned the updating and maintaining...that I cannot see improving to Enterprise levels purely down to logistics of shifting data around and having any chance of keeping it under control.

Hopefully someone will come along and give us both an "A-Ha" moment and encourage you to push past your awful experience and give it another go!

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nombrekeff profile image
Keff

Yeah I too hope it has evolved a bit since then. And hopefully, as you say, someone will clear some things up for us.

I also can't see it at an enterprise level any time soon, but maybe they're not ment to be. I also doubt big companies would want to, having control over the system and having access to data is quite powerfull for them.