At this moment in time, internet users throughout the world do not have full control over the data that they share across all websites. Instead, all of the data shared goes through a middleman that processes it and then sends it to the next interested party.

Decentralized Apps (dapps), built with the help of the Ethereum network are bound to change this in the future. Their sole purpose is to connect providers and the afferent users directly. Another main characteristic associated with dapps is the fact that they often have an open-source API, provide immutability thanks to the blockchain and most do not have a point of failure.

While the Bitcoin community has been debating whether to issue a hard fork for a while now, to reduce the blocksize, the Ethereum network has taken the step forward and carried out the long-debated and anticipated fork on the blockchain.

A couple of hours ago, the China-based Ethereum miner known by the name of BW.com managed to mine the 192,000th block on the Ethereum blockchain. Just a few seconds afterwards, the mining pool also mined the first block on the new version of the blockchain, thus returning the funds that were lost during the collapse of The DAO project.

DAO, which stands for decentralized financial organization, represents a new concept that is quickly gaining ground in the financial, and developer markets.

To put things better into perspective, what makes DAO organizations special, is the fact that while they do have regulations and bylaws just like all other companies, their legal documents are actually embedded, and hard-coded into the distributed ledger we know as the blockchain. During the last year, financial institutions, enterprise tech companies and startups have all begun focusing on this exciting new technology, and thus started looking for ways to initiate secure transfers, incorporate smart contracts, and improve our current financial infrastructure.