One of DApp’s roles in our lives

Entertainment

Entertainment is an integral part of our lives. DApps make it possible to digitize and even monetize everyday leisure time. For example, Audius, a decentralized, blockchain-based streaming platform, does not use intermediaries from the traditional music industry, but connects artists directly to their fans. On this platform, artists can monetize content and create immutable recordings of their work in blockchain.

DApps also help solve problems faced by social media users. Centralized social networks like Twitter and Facebook are often criticized for censoring posts and inappropriate treatment of user data. And in decentralized DApp social networks like Steemit, users can freely interact with each other and express opinions without so much restriction and censorship, controlling their personal information.

Managing

DApp users actively participate in the governance of online organizations through a decision-making mechanism in which the community plays a key role. Through smart contracts, the owners of the governance tokens of a blockchain project can put forward proposals and anonymously vote on the proposals of other users.

Another model of decentralized governance is offered by decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs). DAOs can be considered fully autonomous DApps, which use smart contracts to make decisions without a central governing body. There is no hierarchy on these platforms, and the interests of the DAO and its members are aligned through economic mechanisms.

Prediction Markets

Prediction markets are stock exchanges which trade not commodities or financial instruments but the results of various events, from sports games to presidential elections, for example.

The idea of prediction markets is based on the fact that the exchange price of one or another result reflects its probability. For example, a price of $0.74 means that the probability of the expected result is 74%.

Prediction markets are partly reminiscent of futures contract transactions, where the price of an object in the future is also something of a prediction.

The concept of prediction markets is used by a number of betting shops, such as Betfair. But unlike centralized services, decentralized platforms allow any user to create their own prediction market, instead of just voting for events offered by the platform itself.

An example of a decentralized prediction marketplace is Augur, created on the Ethereum platform.

Gaming and gambling

One of the main problems of the online gambling segment is the lack of transparency and, as a result, the distrust of users in traditional apps and online games. With dApps, it is possible to provide full transparency of bets and secure storage of users’ funds.

This explains the growing popularity of decentralized gaming apps. As of early July 2019, dApps from the gaming and gambling categories ranked in the top six of the most popular decentralized apps.

One of the first decentralized games to gain widespread popularity was CryptoKitties, released on the Ethereum platform in late 2017. The initial interest in the game was so great that a record was set for the number of transactions in the network (although its speed dropped to almost zero).