Further Decentralizing the Auction DApp

Our DApp is already quite decentralized, but we can improve things.

The AuctionRepository contract operates independently of any oversight, open to anyone. Once deployed it cannot be stopped, nor can any auction be controlled. Each auction has a separate chat room that allows anyone to communicate about the auction without censorship or identification. The various auction assets, such as the description and associated image, are stored on Swarm, making them hard to censor or block.

Anyone can interact with the DApp by constructing transactions manually or by running the Vue frontend on their local machine. The DApp code itself is open source and developed collaboratively on a public repository.

There are two things we can do to make this DApp decentralized and resilient:

  • Store all the application code on Swarm or IPFS.

  • Access the DApp by reference to a name, using the Ethereum Name Service.

We’ll explore the first option in the next section, and we’ll dig into the second in The Ethereum Name Service (ENS).