What is a decentralized application?

The frontend of a decentralized application represents what you see, and the backend represents the entire business logic. This business logic is represented by one or several smart contracts interacting with the underlying blockchain. The frontend, as well as files like a photo, a video, or audio, could be hosted on decentralized storage networks such as Swarm or IPFS. Traditional Web applications use HTML, CSS, and javascript or the like to render a webpage. This page interacts with a centralized database, where all the data is stored. When you use a service like Twitter, Amazon, or Airbnb, for example, the webpage will call an API to process your personal data and other necessary information stored on their servers, to display them on the page. User ID and passwords are used for identification and authentication, with low levels of security, since personalized data is stored on the server of the service provider.

Decentralized applications are similar to a traditional Web application. The frontend uses the exact same technology to render the page. It contains a “wallet” that communicates with the blockchain. The wallet manages cryptographic keys and the blockchain address. Public-key infrastructure is used for user identification and authentication. Instead of an API connecting to a database, a wallet so – ware triggers activities of a smart contract, which interacts with a blockchain, which is in our case the Electra Protocol network.