Why Your DApp's Frontend is Its Biggest Centralization Risk

99% of dApp frontends are served from centralized cloud providers like AWS or Cloudflare, creating a single point of failure and censorship. A takedown notice to the host can render your entire protocol inaccessible, regardless of its on-chain resilience.

• Single Point of Failure: One legal notice can kill access.
• Trust Assumption: Users must trust the host's uptime and neutrality.
• Data Integrity Risk: Frontend can be swapped for a malicious version.

Host frontend code on content-addressed storage like IPFS or Arweave, served through a distributed network of gateways. Pinning services like Pinata or Fleek ensure persistence. This makes the frontend immutable and globally accessible without a central server.

• Content Addressing: Code is fetched by hash, guaranteeing integrity.
• Censorship-Resistant: No single entity controls all access points.
• Permanent Storage: Arweave provides permanent, one-time fee storage.

Use Ethereum Name Service (ENS) domains to point to your IPFS hash. Users access via .eth links resolved through their wallet or a decentralized resolver, breaking dependency on traditional DNS controlled by ICANN. Combine with services like IPNS for updatable pointers.

• Sovereign Naming: Control your domain via your private key, not a registrar.
• Decentralized Resolution: Clients like MetaMask resolve .eth without central API.
• Integrity Guarantee: ENS record points to a specific, immutable hash.

Next-gen protocols like Fula (formerly Fluence) and Huddle enable truly peer-to-peer frontend logic. Application code runs on a decentralized compute network, with UI components streamed directly between users' nodes, eliminating the 'server' concept entirely.

• No Server: Frontend logic executes on a p2p network.
• Real-Time Collaboration: Native support for multiplayer app states.
• Client-Side Verification: All logic is locally verifiable.

Even with a decentralized frontend, most dApps rely on a single, centralized RPC provider (Infura, Alchemy) for blockchain data. This provider can censor transactions, manipulate data, or go offline, breaking the application's core functionality.

• Censorship Vector: Provider can filter or block specific transactions.
• Data Manipulation: Malicious RPC can return incorrect chain state.
• Dependency Risk: Creates systemic fragility across the ecosystem.

Integrate with decentralized RPC networks like POKT Network, Lava Network, or Blast API. These protocols incentivize a geographically distributed network of node runners to serve requests, providing redundancy, censorship resistance, and competitive pricing.

• Redundant Providers: Requests are load-balanced across hundreds of nodes.
• Censorship-Resistant: No single entity controls access.
• Market Pricing: Competition drives down costs versus monopolistic providers.

Centralized RPC endpoints like Infura or Alchemy can censor users, leak data, and cause global downtime. Your $10B+ TVL protocol is at the mercy of a third-party's uptime and policies.

• Single Point of Failure: One provider outage breaks your entire app.
• Data Centralization: User activity is visible to the RPC provider.
• Censorship Risk: Providers can block transactions to specific contracts.

Use a network of providers (e.g., POKT Network, Blast API) and leverage account abstraction bundlers for redundancy. This distributes trust and eliminates single points of failure.

• Redundancy: Failover across multiple global nodes.
• Censorship Resistance: No single entity can block access.
• Data Privacy: User queries are distributed, not monitored by one party.

A centralized web host (AWS, Cloudflare, Vercel) can take your frontend offline with a single takedown request. This has happened to dYdX and Uniswap interfaces.

• Legal Vulnerability: Host complies with legal pressure, not code.
• Geoblocking: Entire regions can be denied access.
• Deployment Centralization: Your CI/CD pipeline is also a target.

Host your frontend on decentralized storage networks. IPFS provides content-addressed resilience, while Arweave guarantees permanent storage. Use a gateway aggregator for reliable access.

• Immutable Deployment: Frontend code is pinned and verifiable.
• Censorship-Proof: No central server to take down.
• Global Availability: Served from a distributed network of nodes.

Your .com domain is the weakest link. Registrars like GoDaddy have seized domains based on legal requests, making your entire application unreachable even if the frontend files are decentralized.

• Registry Control: ICANN-compliant registrars must obey court orders.
• Phishing Vector: Centralized DNS is susceptible to hijacking.
• User Confusion: Changing domains loses user trust and traffic.

Use the Ethereum Name Service (ENS) as your primary frontend address. Point your .eth domain's contenthash record directly to your IPFS or Arweave deployment. Browsers with ENS support (e.g., via MetaMask) resolve it natively.

• Crypto-Native Access: Users type yourapp.eth directly.
• Registrar-Proof: Control is via your private key, not a TOS.
• Decentralized Stack: Completes the chain from name to content.