Where Do Ethereum Dapps Store Information?
A look into decentralized storage
Ethereum Dapps are made up of a frontend, an Ethereum API to talk to the blockchain, and smart contracts. This is the entire architecture of a blockchain app. But when we compare this architecture to that of a traditional app, we can see one part missing, the database.
A traditional backend communicates with the database to receive and give information. So how does a Dapp handle this?
You might say that the Ethereum blockchain itself can be used for storage. While you would be right in that smart contracts on-chain can store states. The Ethereum blockchain was not designed to hold large data information.
Every node needs to be able to store all the blockchain data. If huge amounts of information were stored on the blockchain, every node would have to store all of it, and it would not be feasible for the nodes.
And don’t forget about the gas fees. I can’t even imagine the costs of storing a large amount of data on-chain. So storing data on-chain is out of the question. Instead, we use databases that are decentralized, just like the blockchain.
