Now that I have a lil crypto, I'm more than a lil obsessed. 

No shame in my blockchain (yikes, sorry). And I'm hodling, cuz the market's starting to cough and sputter (and yaas, I wanna learn to day trade, but I'm still 101). 

Time to learn about dApps.

Now, going in, I got the gist: dApps are...apps. But beyond that, here's what I knew: dApps are apps which interact with the blockchain using...

*hand waving*  *wizardry*  *magical math stuff*

So, I understood dApps like the Underpants Gnome business plan.

So, what's the dif between an app and a dApp?

Apps, as we know them, typically live on specific servers, somewhere. To wildly simplify, the code exists in a location. There may be a few locations or it may be distributed over a few servers in a few locations, but when you run an app, say, on your phone, you're doing something sorta similar to when you visit a web page (which is an address). Even if you download an app, it (the frontend, what you see) is attached to (calls) code (its backend) somewhere, which sends it updates or provides info via a database, or whatever.

A dApp also makes its call to the backend code, which runs on servers. Only these servers run on the blockchain, or a decentralized peer-to-peer network...yanno, a distributed system (usually Ethereum, but not necessarily). Instead of existing in one place (or a few), dApps exist in many places, all at the same time, all interacting with one another.

This is why you'll find many dApps charge users a eency to not-eency amount of some coin (again, usually ethereum, but not necessarily) to use...because they are writing to the blockchain, there's a gas fee (just like you pay when you, say, move your crypto around between wallets or exchanges).

They cost money! That sucks!

Kinda. Sure. Many dApps get around this by providing some additional value, whether in the form of in-dApp coins/tokens or by providing "collectibles" (digital assets in the dApp that the user owns outright, and can sell or trade as they see fit*). 

*and there is a whole universe of collectibles: from cryptokitties, where you can breed unique digital cats, to cryptotitties (srsly) where you, uh, own digital boobs. And ye gods, if you've ever met a geek, you'll know how intoxicating the idea of a collectible is...and digital ones don't even get ruined out of the package, cuz they have no package (there's an idea! Cryptopackages. I see your crypto knockers and raise you cryptodongs).

I have enough beewbs. Is there any other advantage?

A few, that I've noticed.

One, is the idea of ownership and permanence. Say Twitter goes belly up. Your years of brilliant 140 character rants are potentially kaput, gone, poof. They weren't realllllly yours. You wrote them a server location/s owned and operated by Twitter. Unless you diligently kept copies of your retweeting excellence, and who does? They're toast.

But, a Twitter on the blockchain (meet Peepeth, a terrible name for a marvelous dApp), your posts are yours, signed by you, and which live on the blockchain for...eternity.

Secondly, it's hard for a dApp to fail. It can get abandoned. But there's no one single point of failure that can take it down. Because it's distributed over many locations, usually the blockchain, no single person or institution can easily eliminate it. Could be done? Hypothetically, sure, but that shit would be apocalyptic.

And thirdly: less fuckery. Not none. Less. 

There's a golden ratio:

+ costs money to do = - shitposts, spam, trolling

A corollary:

(+ costs money to do) + (+ prove your identity) = 0 shitposts, spam, trolling

Peepeth, though relatively new and underpopulated, is gloriously empty of most crapola**...even though, atm, they pay users' gas fees.

(** seriously. Come swim with me. The water's fine! And I need friends. *weeps*)

I don't know where to find these.

That is the trickiest part. The best compilation of dApps (cataloging, kinda like Yahoo did with URLs waaaaaaay back in the day, is State of the dApps.

I also learn about them frankly, by reading articles and blogs here, and looking up stuff that sounds interesting. And if you have a wallet like TrustWallet, among others, there is a built-in list/browser of dApps included on one of the screens/tabs, but it's always just a few.

Where do you find out about dApps? Do you have one you love? Despise? Tell me about it! Comments and tips make my day. 

Until next time...something, something, profit!