Blockstack Announces 'Universal' Dapp Store for the Decentralized Web

Blockstack announced app.co, a decentralized app store aimed at bringing together all dapps for users' convenience.

May 16, 2018 at 1:18 p.m. UTC

Updated Sep 13, 2021 at 7:57 a.m. UTC

Decentralized web developer Blockstack is one step closer to its vision of web 3.0 with the introduction of app.co, a directory for decentralized applications or dapps.

Co-founder Ryan Shea said the company was launching the resource, which is aimed at bridging the gap between decentralized app developers and potential users. The open-source project will be free for developers, and Blockstack sees “this as a critical moment for decentralized application development and discovery,” Shea said.

He went on to explain:

”The goal here is to demonstrate, to really bring together app developers and users and provide value in connecting the two. We want to help users discover decentralized applications. We launched our browser last year which was a great success, and after that we started noticing people were building real apps on top of our platform, and this last year we were focused on learning from them.”

Indeed, it's the first step toward what is intended to become a dedicated storefront for dapp developers, with the goal of allowing devs to charge for premium versions of their app as well as expand to a wider market.

“We’re looking to make this a comprehensive dapp store, and one component is an index and you can see the most popular applications, and another component is a feature list kind of like what you can find in the Apple app store," he added.

Blockstack is moving out of the infrastructure phase and into supporting scalable dapps, he said, adding that “they’re getting real traction and real users.”

Stepping back, Shea told CoinDesk that his company will continue to encourage the development of a decentralized web, and encouraged developers to work together. He said:

“One of the things that we want to say to the community, there might be different platforms that compete with each other but we’re still very small and the real competition is with Facebook and [the like].”

Gumball machines image via Shutterstock

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