7.2 Exploring DApps - Video Tutorials & Practice Problems

So we've talked about DApps, and I mentioned that there's a wide range of DApps available. Now we're going to look exactly at how many different types of DApps are out there? To do so, I want to take you to a website called stateofthedapps, and specifically on stateofthedapps you will actually be able to see a directory of many decentralized applications. This is a very valuable website because on it you will see that, for instance, we talk about Ethereum, which we said was a platform that actually for running smart contracts, but you see there are other ones. There's EOS, there's POA, there's GoChain, and we even talk about Steem. So specifically these are different block chains. So Ethereum's not the only one, and you can build decentralized applications on these. Now let's explore some of these DApps so you can actually see what I'm talking about. So, let's look at some view of the top DApps right now. You'll see there's a wide range of 'em. We talked about Steemit, and we talked about the fact that you can publish content and actually get rewarded for doing them. Well right here you see Steem, well you can go down and you'll see other ones, among them that you will see some very valuable ones that are very interesting and this one is Augur. Augur is a very popular specific decentralized application because it's a predictions market, and people who use Augur are actually able to place bets on predicting certain events. So Augur is another one that uses these digital tokens and is a decentralized application that uses these tokens. Going down you will find other ones, among them you will find CryptoKitties will be right around here. There's CryptoKitties right there. And if we go back up on the top, I can even do a search for Golem, so you can see Golem. So all of these decentralized applications are listed on the website stateofthedapps. What I would like to do so now, is I am going to take you specifically to show you some digital tokens on the CoinMarketCap website that we spoke about earlier. So we're back at CoinMarketCap.com and I'm going to point out to you some lessons to show you exactly where these digital tokens fit in because CoinMarketCap.com divides the cryptocurrencies into two types of categories. So we spoke about that there's 2,177 cryptocurrencies, but these cryptocurrencies are actually divided into two categories. There's coins and there's tokens. Now coins have their own block chain. So if I go, for instance, within these coins and I go coins only, you will find Bitcoin, you will find Ethereum, you'll find Bitcoin Cash, and you'll find Litecoin. Now here's what's interesting, if I actually focus on, and I'm going to go to tokens now, if I go to tokens only, you will find there is a whole slew of other cryptocurrencies and you'll find in here different cryptocurrencies. But let me show you what the difference is. You will notice that each of these cryptocurrencies has an associated platform, and that is because these are tokens which are built on a different platform. So when I talk to you about a digital token built on Ethereum, well here are samples. We got Basic Attention Token, that's called BAT. You can actually go into, you've got the USD Coin, all of these are cryptocurrencies that are digital tokens built on top of Ethereum. For instance, I spoke to you about Augur. So here's Augur, a digital token that requires Ethereum. And if you go through these things, you will also be able to see Golem is going to be listed here as well, and there is a wide range of other cryptocurrencies. All of these, all of these are specific digital tokens that are built on different platforms. And there's a slew of these different block chains, for instance Ethereum is a platform for running smart contracts, but so is Omni. And you'll find there are other ones, not just Ethereum, even though Ethereum, the best known and most popular one. But there are other ones. You see here there's Stellar, there's NEM, if you go through you got some RSK Smart Bitcoin because you can actually run smart contracts on Bitcoin and that's leveraging the RSK platform. So when you go through these, NEO's another one. So there's many, many different applications and different platforms that you can build digital tokens on. So I encourage you as you actually get the opportunity to go to this CoinMarketCap.com to start looking at some of these. So I'll just give you a really quick example. Let's look at Augur. If you go to Augur, you'll find out exactly that cryptocurrency, you'll see the symbol for the cryptocurrency REP, but you'll also see a link to go to their website. So you'll see that there's a whole business built on top of this, and that's the decentralized application I talk to you about. Augur basically runs independently, runs autonomously, but uses these digital tokens, which run on Ethereum, to function. So that, in a nutshell, is what all these decentralized applications are all about.