Centralized dApps

Describes how the lack of support for extensive metadata is contributing to “Centralized Decentralized App” oxymoron in Web 3 space

Since there is no protocol or standard on how to treat the data in the Web 3, most of the dApps keep the application data locked in the centralized databases, which defeats the purpose of Web 3, where decentralized data should be treated as a first-class citizen.

The problem with the data locked in the centralized databases mostly comes down to trust and accessibility. For example, if an NFT was created in one marketplace and all the metadata that makes up proof of value for this NFT is kept in the PostgresDB of this marketplace dApp, how will another marketplace, where this NFT could be sold to, access this metadata to inform the users what this NFT is all about? Also, the first marketplace will have very little incentive to provide this data, since having NFTs traded on their platform is their business goal and they will be interested in vendor locking, especially if none of the other marketplaces support this either.

Technically, this is a typical data integration issue, which is expensive to solve, since APIs should be available on every side, the formats of the data have to be mutually understandable or standardized, security needs to be addressed, etc. It is much more beneficial to have a data protocol that will take care of all these issues ahead of time and introduce “sharing is caring” attitude for data exchange in a particular eco-system or community.

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