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🧰 House of dApps

Wait, WTF is a dApp?

Good question ser / madam!

A dApp is an application whose back end code is running on a decentralised, peer-to-peer network. Decentralized apps are censorship resistant, have no single point of failure and are generally publicly owned and open sourced. This is in contrast to a centralized app like Facebook, Netflix or Twitter that is hosted on centralized servers (they own your data), oft owned by the companies behind the app and as a result are quite susceptible to data breaches, are liable to censorship and skulduggery around selling data.

With dApps, often the front-end layer is also hosted in a decentralized manner, using a service like Fleek to store the code on IPFS

The key factors that define a dApp are [cite: Definition of a dApp, ethereum.org]:

**Decentralized**

means they are independent, and no one can control them as a group.

**Deterministic**

they perform the same function irrespective of the environment they are executed.

**Turing complete**

which means given the required resources, the dApp can perform any action.

**Isolated**,

which means they are executed in a virtual environment known as Ethereum Virtual Machine so that if the smart contract happens to have a bug, it won’t hamper the normal functioning of the blockchain network.

Some dApps can be referred to as 'legos' or 'money legos', with most of the protocols and platforms having APIs or SDKs, recipes for smart contracts or whole DeFi (Decentralized Finance) strategies that can be cloned, customized and integrated into other projects.

🛫 Grab your $bags and read on meta traveler...


We've composed a list of some of our favorite dApps here, as well as some websites about dApps, where to find them and how to build them. If we've missed any you think should be included or if a link isn't working, please let us know by dropping into our Discord using this invite link.

Pick of the dApps

Here's our curated list of dApps

👯 DAO dApps

  • Giveth - The future of giving. Donate directly to social good projects with zero added fees. Giveth are one of our favourites.
  • MolochDAO - Originally created to fund Ethereum 2.0 grants and now invests in Ethereum development
  • LexDAO - The Decentralized Legal Engineering Guild. A non-profit association of legal engineering professionals that brings the traditional legal settlement layer to code, and coded agreements to the masses.
  • DAOStack - DAOstack is an open source project advancing the technology and adoption of decentralized governance.
  • Colony - DAOs made easy! Start an organization, give it structure, incentivize contributors, award reputation, and manage funds. No coding required.
  • DAOHaus - Unlock the next tier in community coordination.
  • Coordinape - Scale your community with tools to reward contributors, incentivize participation and manage resources

If you want to learn more about DAOs, check our House of DAOs page here on the wiki.

💰 DeFi & Unbanking

This is a small selection of the many DeFi protocols and dApps that are changing the face of finance. Do Your Own Research, learn and get yourself unbanked. Free yourself from the shackles of TradFi and the inevitable rug pull of the current banking system. Earn yield (A truck load more than your savings account) on your assets, get loans that pay themselves off, insure your assets. No intermediaries. You are in control of your finances.

If you want to learn more about DeFi, check our House of DeFiance page here on the wiki.

  • Alchemix Finance - Alchemix lets you reimagine the potential of DeFi by providing highly flexible instant loans that repay themselves over time.
  • InstaDapp - ⏩ Full DeFi platform supporting Ethereum & Polygon. Lend & borrow on Aave via a pretty sweet UI.
  • SushiSwap - A very good DeFi platform supporting 10 different networks (Ethereum, Polygon, xDai, Fantom to name a few) 🍣
  • Zerion - Started as a wallet & portfolio tracker. Is now a one stop shop for DeFi. Desktop and mobile apps available.
  • Zapper - Track and visualize your DeFi assets and liabilities on a simple dashboard.
  • Bridge Mutual - Insurance for crypto assets. Protect all your crypto assets and earn profits in exchange for coverage liquidity. Coverage for contracts, stablecoins or exchanges.
  • Synthetix - A protocol for the issuance of on-chain synthetic assets that track the value of real-world assets such as Gold, Silver, Oil, etc, etc.
  • Aave - Full blown DeFi platform and one of the most established. Ethereum/Polygon
  • DeFi Saver - Advanced DeFi Management. DeFi Saver is a one-stop dashboard for creating, managing and tracking your DeFi positions.On Ethereum
  • Badger Finance - A single purpose DAO: build the products and infrastructure necessary to accelerate Bitcoin as collateral across other blockchains. A very active community.

🎨 NFTs & Music

  • Hashmasks - living digital art collectables created by over 70 artists globally. 16,384 portraits make up the collection.
  • Rarible - NFT minting & trading platform
  • SuperRare - Collect digital art. Buy and sell NFTs from the world’s top artists
  • OpenSea - Discover, collect, and sell NFTs on the world's first & largest NFT marketplace
  • Catalog - Collect, trade, and listen to provably authentic works. Artists receive 100% on their initial sale and also set a percentage fee upfront that they’ll receive on every resale.
  • Audius - a music streaming and sharing platform that puts the power back into content creators’ hands. Look out Spotify!!
  • KnownOrigin - Community marketplace of NFT artists and artworks
  • Achievmintry - Every year there are groups and individuals that stand out as note worthy contributors. Many times doing their good work out of pure passion. Achievmintry is a way for the wider community to recognise those contributions in the form of special NFTs.

If you want to learn more about NFTs, check our House of NFTs page here on the wiki.

🚰 Utilities

Off-ramp crypto to your bank, handle invoicing, find legal services, offset your carbon and stream money to anyone with a wallet address. These are some of the things you can do with the dApps below. Enjoy!

  • MooniDapp - Easiest crypto cash out. 🌚 Convert crypto into fiat to your bank account with no KYC (Know Your Customer). 😱 Built by our very own pacobacpac & team, it is such a useful dApp. It can be a very daunting process trying a new thing and passing your hard earned assets through it but their Discord support is excellent. Only available to transfer to EUR/CHF to SEPA network accounts.
  • Smart Invoice (Beta) - The future of payment! Safe, efficient, Smart Invoice builds trust between payer and payee by creating a secure neutral channel for transferring money. No middle party, no leap of faith, and you don’t even have to use the word escrow if you don’t want to. Built by RaidGuild ⚔️
  • OpenLaw - OpenLaw makes it easy to create legal agreements that work with Ethereum
  • SuperFluid - Handle subscriptions, salaries, rewards and any composable stream of value, with continuous settlement and per-second netting for extreme capital efficiency. SuperFluid is super cool. Works on xDai and Polygon networks. The protocol is open sourced so you can clone the code and integrate it into your own dApp.
  • EarniFi - Get notified of airdrops you're eligible for! Airdrops of tokens are pretty common in crypto and especially when you get involved in the community. contributing to DAOs, donating to grants, doing hackathons and being an early adopter of new dApps. EarniFi lets you monitor upto 10 wallets and receive an email when one of them is eligible for an airdrop. It is not perfect and missed one or two but has way more than paid for itself.
  • GnosisSafe - Fully customize how you manage your company crypto assets, with the option to require a predefined number of signatures to confirm transactions. Require multiple team members to confirm every transaction in order to execute it, which helps prevent unauthorized access to company crypto.
  • ETH tx Street - Visualises all transactions on the Ethereum and Bitcoin blockchains as South Park-esque characters leaving shops and catching trains. 😄 Very interesting and helps understand how gas affects transaction speed.
  • ENS - Ethereum Name Service. ENS offers a secure and decentralised way to address resources both on and off the blockchain using simple, human-readable names.
  • 3box - All-in-one sign-in, profile, and cloud storage on Ethereum.
  • Radicle - a decentralized code collaboration network built on open protocols. It enables developers to collaborate on code without relying on trusted intermediaries. ⚔️
  • xPollinate - Cross chain bridge for xDai, Polygon, Fantom & Binance Smart Chain (🤮). A dApp brought to you by the busy bees over at 1Hive 🍯🐝
  • Creol - Offset your carbon footprint with a monthly subscription at Creol. Verifiable on-chain, every month, with an NFT sent to your wallet on Polygon! 🌳🌍

👨‍🔧 Work

  • EthLance - Find work and get compensated in digital currencies. A great site for freelancers to find work. It will cost some gas to apply and create a profile.It works a bit like Fiver or eLance but the rates seem pretty good!
  • Gitcoin Bounties - Not technically a dApp but GitCoin is a DAO and this is quite a big old rabbit hole. Hop down it! 🐰

🎮Games & Virtual Worlds

  • CryptoVoxels - CV is a user owned virtual world on Ethereum, where you can buy land, build art galleries to display NFTs, create stores and even night clubs with streaming video & audio. You can even buy clothing from MetaFactory that is also a wearable item in CV. 🤖🗺️
  • Decentraland - Create, explore and trade in the first-ever virtual world owned by its users.
  • Gods Unchained - Get paid to play this trading card game. Stunning visuals.
  • Dark Forest - Discover and conquer planets in an infinite, procedurally-generated, cryptographically-specified universe.
  • Axie Infinity - Earn Small Love Potion (SLP) while you collect, raise, and battle fantasy creatures called Axie. Axie are also tradeable as NFTs on the AxieInfinity marketplace.
  • Aavegotchi: Cute gotchi collectibles on the Polygon network, DeFi enabled and powered by Aave. Collect them, compete, and combine your Aavegotchis for the ultimate gamified DeFi experience. There is also a marketplace for buying and selling Aavegotchis and wearables.

🏭 dApp Aggregators:

Go on your own journey of discovery and get lost down many rabbit holes. I hope you like browser tabs 😅

  • StateofDapps - Discover the boundless possibilities of Web3 with a huge list of dApps on Ethereum, EOS, Hive, Klaytn and NEO blockchains with this rather comprehensive registry of DApp projects
  • dapp.com - A nifty collection of useful and popular dApps.
  • Dapplist- Curating web3 adoption.
  • xDai links- The super nice thing about this list is includes so many DAO related links. It is also a very comprehensive list of dApps on xDai. Go play on xDai with low fees and zippy transactions! Bridge your assets using xPollinate from the folks over at 1Hive.
  • DappRadar - Defi, NFTs, Games, Gambling and Exchanges. Everything dApp, on pretty much every chain and layer 2.

😱 The esoteric stuff:

  • Unchained Podcast- Your no-hype resource for all things crypto.
  • Bankless - An epic resource for learning about crypto, what it is, what it does, how to use all of the protocols and dApps and make the most of them. Mostly focused on DeFi and becoming 'un-banked' but is an essential resource. They also operate as a DAO.

👷‍♀️Build dApps:

Dev in Web3 & crypto space is not all about writing Smart Contracts and being an expert in cryptography! While you would be in great demand as a Smart Contract developer, the industry is also short of solid Web2 developers with skills in modern front-end stacks. If you know Python, you can write Smart Contracts in Python with Brownie. If you're struggling to find work in Web2 or you're just up for hacking on some bleeding edge stuff, I urge you to jump down the Web3 rabbit hole and come help a DAO to make the world a better place. ⚔️ MetaGame would love to have you if you have React, TypeScript, GraphQL, Hasura and other front-end skills. On to the links...

General resources, learning & documentation

Bootstrapping dApp projects

  • ETH.BUILD - An educational sandbox for Web3... learn the nuts and bolts of cryptography, the blockchain, wallets, etc.
  • Scaffold-eth - An outstanding resource for any Web3 dev. Literally everything you need to get started building decentralized applications on Ethereum! Bootstrap an Aave lending pool, an NFT auction site or a UniSwap clone, in minutes. Loads of video walkthroughs too.
  • BuidlGuidl- A curated group of Ethereum builders creating products, prototypes, and tutorials with scaffold-eth.
  • Jolly Roger Production-Ready Template To Build Decentralised Applications
  • Origin Protocol dShop - Create a free on-line store in minutes and build on top of the world's first decentralized e-commerce platform.

Smart Contracts

  • Solidity - The documentation for Solidity, the primary language used to write Smart Contracts on Ethereum.
  • Will It Scale video course on Solidity - An oldie but a goldie. Solidity is always changing, but this is a thorough start.
  • Cryptozombies- This has been the go-to Solidity intro for years! Everyone loves Cryptozombies and you will too! Learn how to write smart contracts whilst creating a game on the blockchain!
  • Brownie - Brownie is a Python-based development and testing framework for smart contracts on Ethereum.
  • Hardhat- Ethereum development environment for professionals.
  • Hardhat tutorial - Hardhat for beginners.
  • Truffle Suite- Sweet tools for smart contracts. The Truffle Suite gets developers from idea to dapp as comfortably as possible. Tools include Ganache, Truffle & Drizzle. All free to use in your projects.
  • Remix ethereum browser IDE- It's an Ethereum IDE. In your browser.

For the frontend

Also see the Bootstrapping section

  • ReactJS - A JavaScript library for building user interfaces and very often used in Web3 projects, along with NextJS and Typescript.
  • Chakra UI - while not essential, it is good to know chakra or similar component library as many projects are using this for building out components.
  • Typescript - Typed JavaScript at scale. Many many projects are using this, so will help you hit the ground running when you start to contribute.
  • web3.js - see General resources 👆
  • ethers.js - see General resources 👆

APIs, Storage & Protocols

  • IPFS - Inter Planetary File System, a peer-to-peer hypermedia protocol designed to preserve and grow humanity's knowledge by making the web upgradeable, resilient, and more open.
  • FileCoin - Filecoin is an open-source cloud storage marketplace, protocol, and cryptocurrency.
  • bluzelle - Bluzelle is a decentralized storage network for the creator economy. Whether you are an artist, musician, scientist, publisher, or developer, Bluzelle protects the intellectual property of all creators. It will be available, anytime, and always worry free.
  • EPNS - Ethereum Push Notification Service. Subscribe. Notify. Earn. Protocol for blockchain based notifications that are platform agnostic and incentivized!
  • BurnerWallet - The Burner Wallet is a quick web wallet used to move small amounts of crypto quickly. Burners are analogous to cash: quick and easy but less secure. You wouldn't stuff thousands of dollars in your pocket on the way out the door at night, don't trust a seed phrase in localstorage with more than you are willing to lose. Burner Wallets can be integrated into dApps for example Nifty.ink
  • Pinata- The easiest way to use IPFS for your projects.
  • TheGraph - APIs for a vibrant decentralized future. An indexing protocol for querying networks like Ethereum and IPFS. Anyone can build and publish open APIs , called subgraphs, making data easily accessible using GraphQL.
  • Ocean Protocol - Ocean Protocol unlocks the value of data. Data owners and consumers use Ocean Market app to publish, discover, and consume data assets in a secure, privacy-preserving fashion. OCEAN holders stake liquidity to data pools.
  • Origin Protocol - Bringing NFTs and DeFi to the masses. A launchpad for NFT collections

How-to buidl articles:

Tutorials for the budding Web3 developer