While much of the crypto world remains a speculative market for investments, exciting DApps are emerging on the Ethereum platform. Here are five DApps showing Ethereum is used for more than just investment purposes.

5. Augur – The Predictive Markets Dapp

Augur leverages the hive mind of crowds to make real-time predictions using actual money. Since investors essentially bet on their predictions and earn a reward when their predictions are right, there’s a strong incentive to only place good bets. Predictive markets have been shown to be more accurate than individual predictions from analysts and traditional survey polls. Essentially, when you’re asked to bet specifically on what will happen, you’ll make the most accurate guess. Other projects such as

Project updates: The Augur beta is running on the testnet. Developers are checking for potential vulnerabilities and plan to launch Augur in the next few months.

4. BlockCAT – The Coding Shortcut Dapp

BlockCAT is opening up smart contracts to everyone by creating a visual interface that helps with backend coding needs. That means even non-coders can set the terms of a smart contract and deploy it easily on Ethereum. For P2P and B2B, this visual smart contract solution is an exciting way to start using the Ethereum blockchain to streamline business.

Project updates: BlockCAT just launched

3. FunFair – The Gaming Smart Contracts Dapp

FunFair combines Ethereum’s smart contract capabilities with “fun, fast, fair” gaming opportunities for casinos. Establishing trust is one of the biggest obstacles for new online gaming sites, and FunFair brings the transparency of smart contracts to help players and new online casinos ensure fair play.

Project updates: FunFair is recruiting online casino and gaming companies. It plans to launch its first operator soon. Its showcase gives an idea of what linking a wallet with an online casino platform would look like, and it’s fun to try out.  

2. Etherdelta – The Exchange Dapp

EtherDelta is a decentralized Ethereum and ERC-20 token exchange. New tokens are often listed here before Binance and Bittrex, giving an early advantage to buyers. Unlike centralized exchanges, there’s no requirement to store one’s money on the exchange, and there’s much higher security. Other competitors built on Ethereum include Kyber and Airswap for trading ERC-20s.

Project updates: Etherdelta is live and running. Though its website has been attacked in the past with very little damage done, the decentralized exchange itself remains much less vulnerable to hacks than centralized exchanges.

1. Golem – The Computing Dapp

The promise of Golem is a worldwide supercomputer source where anyone can be a processing power provider and receive tokens in return.

Project updates: Brass Golem is the first software launch available for download as a testnet. The focus of this first project is offering processing power for graphic and video applications, so Blender and LuxRender artists and computing providers can try it out in the alpha stage.