What the (Current) DApp Stack Looks Like

Many people have been talking about how “DApps,” or decentralized applications, will change the world. Of course, Ethereum has served as the foundation for a whole bunch of DApp development, from banks, to governments, and even the UN.

But how do you make DApps? What would that even look like? Let’s take a quick look at how DApps are currently made (or the different parts of a decentralized application).

A more simplified graphic here may help:

So simply put, we can break down a decentralized application into the following parts:

  1. The application user interface — all the buttons and visualizations that the user sees, pushes, and interacts with
  2. API — the API, or the “Application Protocol Interface” is what fires when a button is pushed, or an action made. Ethereum’s DApp (JavaScript) API is Web3Js. Developers use this to communicate with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM — or Ethereum as a whole, since it is one big computer made of many other computers, “nodes”). More specifically, the API is communicating the the “Smart Contract,” or the coded logic on the EVM that executes/controls the decentralized system actions being made.
  3. Backend (Database) — Ethereum is not a good database (by itself). Storing data in a normal database should be good enough.

Getting Started Making DApps

So how can we get started making DApps? Take a look here to find a great starting tutorial!

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Robert Greenfield IV

Written by

ConsenSys Social Impact, @Goldman Alum, @Cisco Alum, @TFA Alum, Activist, Intense Autodidact

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