Censorship resistance is a much-touted attribute of decentralized networks. They allow anyone to permanently store anything onchain without seeking permission. While this is technically true, the reality, for many supposedly decentralized blockchains, is anything but. As the fate of controversial dapps has shown, even decentralized app stores aren’t immune from censorship and deplatforming.
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Decentralized Networks Aren’t Immune to Deplatforming
Somesing is a karaoke app that’s popular in South Korea. The k-pop app, which is currently available on the Google Play store, is poised to be complemented by a Somesing dapp. Once readied, this decentralized app will be browsable on the likes of Dappradar and State of the Dapps. Essentially the Coinmarketcap of dapps, these sites track metrics such as daily average users, developer activity, and onchain transaction value. As an inoffensive karaoke app, Somesing is unlikely to test the limits of what’s acceptable to host on a blockchain. Other dapps, however, have run into trouble.
On Tron and EOS, the most popular dapps are overwhelmingly for gambling. Tronvegas, Tronbet, and Eosbet have over 100,000 weekly transactions apiece and impressive onchain volume; Tronbet alone has witnessed $350K pass through it in the past seven days, during the course of over 460,000 transactions, while Coincodex records Tronvegas as having close to 3,500 daily users. Betting is big business in dapp land, thanks to the permissionless networks the apps are hosted on, which enables anyone to play, regardless of location or age.
For the architects of blockchain networks that have witnessed significant dapp adoption, the boom in gambling presents a problem. Poker EOS wasn’t the sort
