Decentralized Applications: The Blockchain-Empowered Software System
It addresses the need for clarity on blockchain's practical applications beyond speculation, targeting researchers and practitioners in the field.
This paper surveys the development of decentralized applications (dApps) to highlight their importance and future value in blockchain technology, providing an overview of state-of-the-art dApps and discussing directions for blockchain development to meet dApp characteristics.
Blockchain technology has attracted tremendous attention in both academia and capital market. However, overwhelming speculations on thousands of available cryptocurrencies and numerous initial coin offering (ICO) scams have also brought notorious debates on this emerging technology. This paper traces the development of blockchain systems to reveal the importance of decentralized applications (dApps) and the future value of blockchain. We survey the state-of-the-art dApps and discuss the direction of blockchain development to fulfill the desirable characteristics of dApps. The readers will gain an overview of dApp research and get familiar with recent developments in the blockchain.