Built on Ethereum
There are many different types of applications that can be built on Ethereum. Most applications today fall into the following categories.
Open Finance
Open finance refers to a number of decentralized protocols building open financial infrastructure. These protocols are valuable because they're creating the necessary plumbing to enable anyone in the world with an internet connection to access self-sovereign, censorship resistant financial services.
Decentralized Exchanges
Decentralized Exchanges allow for the trading of crypto assets without the need for a trusted central authority. This cuts down on the risk of exchange hacks and many other risks. There are many types of decentralized exchanges and it's important to understand the differences.
Gaming
Blockchain games are any games that include blockchain technology in its backend or mechanics in general.
Collectibles
Crypto collectibles are unique items that adhere to the ERC-721 standard. They can be collected and perhaps used across many different games and applications built on Ethereum.
Marketplaces
Marketplaces built on Ethereum allow for the trading of ERC-721 tokens such as crypto collectibles.
Developer Tools
A suite of developer tools allow for better standards and easy implementation of these standards across many different applications.
Identity
Identity is a very important aspect to the future of Ethereum. The Ethereum network hosts many DApps that are building identity systems. These DApps leverage the secure and decentralized nature of the Ethereum network often in collaboration with decentralized storage protocols such as IPFS or SWARM to enable empower and protect consumers' information. Citizens will be able to confidentionally reveal personal information such as Gov. ID, credit score, medical history, banking information, etc. to others in a way that also allows them to revoke future access to such information.
Governance
Given the decentralized nature of the protocol, it’s important for some applications to have a way to govern their team, project or app.
Infrastructure
Building out basic infrastructure needs using Ethereum as a base layer.
Token Curated Registries
Token Curated Registries are registries of listings generated by token holders. Listings can be anything from names to hashes of full-blown records stored in IPFS.
ERC Token Standards
ERC Token Standards are technical documents used by smart contract developers at Ethereum. They define a set of rules required to implement tokens for the Ethereum ecosystem.