Most of the applications we use today are centralized, meaning they are controlled by a single authority. For example, Google and Facebook maintain complete ownership of their respective products, using private servers and databases to run their apps and store user information.

In many ways, decentralized applications are similar to centralized applications. Both kinds of apps can be accessible to a wide audience and provide a diverse set of functions, from business services to entertainment. In fact, the only inherent difference between a decentralized application and a standard application is the type of server that parts of their programs run on.

Decentralized applications are applications that run on a peer-to-peer (P2P) network rather than a centralized server.