Resumen:

Easing DApp Interaction for Non-Blockchain Users from a Conceptual Modelling Approach

Blockchain decentralized applications (DApp+IBk-s) are applications which run on blockchains nodes. Thus, to interact directly with this sort of applica-tions, users need to have a blockchain address, wallet, and knowledge about how to make transactions to interact with DApp+IBk-s. Therefore, the knowledge required to use a DApp can easily make users to desist when trying to interact with them. To tackle this issue, we propose a software ar-chitecture that will be in the middle of the user and the DApp, thus making users initially unaware of the fact that they are interacting with a DApp. This is achieved by analyzing the relationship between DApps and Apps by using UML modelling. Next, based on the previous analysis, we created a middleware for users to interact with a DApp in the same manner they do with a traditional web app, i.e., by using usernames, passwords and user in-terface elements instead of addresses, private keys or transactions. To put the developed middleware into practice, we developed a DApp that makes use of it. This DApp registers the time control of workers from companies by using blockchain to store the data in a secure and non-modifiable man-ner. Finally, we performed an experiment, thus demonstrating that a DApp that implements the proposed middleware would improve its usability for users with no experience with blockchain.