What is a dApp#

A decentralized application, or dApp, is one that runs on a distributed peer to peer network rather than from a central server.

In the context of blockchain, a dApp uses smart contracts and possibly a P2P network, instead of a Web API service. A dApp may also expose a front end and cache information from the blockchain temporarily, but its output is ultimately reflected on-chain.

See this site for a more complete overview about dApps.

Decentraland smart contracts#

Decentraland has written and maintains a number of smart contracts that interact with LAND and MANA tokens.

LAND and MANA tokens themselves are defined by the LANDregistry and MANAtoken contracts respectively. The list also includes more specific contracts like creating an estate out of several parcels or mortgaging parcels.

• Decentraland smart contracts: You can find a full list of each of our contracts and their addresses.

Note that each contract has a production version in mainnet and a test version in ropsten and that each has a different address.

You can read the full code of each contract, as it’s public information on the blockchain. For example, you can find the contract by name on Etherscan to read its contents.

dApp boilerplate code#

• Boilerplate code: This Boilerplate code can be a great starting point for building your own dApp.

Helper libraries#

While building our own dApps internally, we put together some helper libraries that you might also find useful.

• Decentraland-eth: This is a low level library with utility functions to work with the Ethereum blockchain.

• Decentraland-dapps: This is a higher level library with common modules for dApps. The modules in this library are built using Decentraland-eth.

• Decentraland UI: This library contains a selection of reusable UI elements that are included in Decentraland’s projects.

Sample dApps#

Below are links to the full code of several dApps that we built around Decentraland, these might help you build your own:

• Canilla: This basic dApp provides free Ropsten MANA.

• Gate: This basic dApp creates an invitation NFT that was used when Decentraland was in a closed beta stage. In the early days, whitelisted players that held this NFT were the only ones able to enter the metaverse.

• Marketplace: This is the full application that runs the Decentraland Marketplace. To make it run fast, it requires a database and a backend server connected to the Ethereum network to create indexes with information about LAND.

dApp testing framework#

Before launching your dApp into production, we recommend testing it first.

• dAppeteer: We put this framework together to help you run tests on your dApp.

Follow: decentraland.org