Understanding the Challenges Surrounding Decentralized Applications: An Empirical Study

Abstract

As the Blockchain gains prominence as a disruptive technology, there has been a rapid growth in the number of decentralized applications (dApps) built on them. Despite the growing number and importance of dApps, we still know very little about the success factors surrounding such applications. While the existing research is primarily focused on the creation and development of dApps, very less research is dedicated to the challenges from dApps developers' perspective. We addressed these issues in the paper by collecting data by means of individual discussions with technical people. The purpose of this collection is to map, classify, and describe the challenges surrounding dApps to help organizations make adequate decisions regarding decentralized applications’ development and promotion. We identified five dimensions of challenges and proposed a framework to describe dApps management and highlight how identified factors influence such applications' adoption.