Evolution of decentralized applications

Let's begin this chapter by quickly refreshing our memory about the current state of decentralized applications in a chronological manner. The following diagram shows how applications have evolved over the past three decades:

Fig 8.1: Evolution of applications since the dawn of the internet

Here, we can observe three major shifts in the application design pattern. We can also observe the three major aspects of how applications evolve over time.

We will discuss each in the following sections.

Traditional web applications

Although prominent work for the foundation of the internet was laid out in the 1970s and the 1980s, it was the World Wide Web that made a significant leap in how information can be shared easily among nodes in a network. Traditional web applications such as blogs, chatrooms, and e-commerce websites emerged since the advent of the public internet in the mid-1990s. The majority of internet traffic is still driven by such applications...