You Can Make Money on These 12 Live Ethereum Dapps Today — Here’s How…

Ethereum dapps are pioneering the way towards open finance and the future of work.

Open finance — also referred to as decentralized finance (#DeFi) — was a common narrative throughout 2018 and will be increasingly popular throughout 2019 as the Ethereum ecosystem continues to expand.

One of the fundamental promises of the open/decentralized finance movement is the potential to redistribute wealth, provide entry points for the unbanked, and achieve financial freedom. Blockchain technology underpins the goals of open finance through the use of smart contract platforms, tokenization, asset ownership, and various other decentralized applications. These dapps are opening up the financial system to create a more merit-based economy — where individuals are rewarded based on skills, for the ability to make accurate predictions, and by lending or staking their personal capital.

Below is a list of Ethereum applications and platforms you can use right now. Most are accessible directly through their websites as demos, betas, or fully-fledged releases.

Bounties and Freelance Work

The easiest way to monetize or incentivize work in open source software. Contributors can explore existing bounties(projects or tasks) and get started working. After work gets reviewed and approved contributors get paid for their services. Since its launch in November 2017, Gitcoin has helped 305 funders reach an audience of 17,414 developers. Gitcoin has facilitated 2,688 complete transactions to 763 unique coders.

Create bounties for any task, easily transact in ETH or ERC-2O tokens. The Bounties Network empowers humans to incentivize and self-organize, from freelancing to grassroots social action, and anything in between. The bounties network has already generated over $400,000 in total bounties.

Allowing people to earn money from anywhere for the work they do, Cent is founded on the principal idea that social networks, as they exist are essentially content networks. Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram give little value to the many content creators and the team at Cent believes they can challenge this status quo. Users call themselves “Centians” and refer to “centing” something as putting a bounty on it.

Find work and get compensated in digital currencies. The Ethlance platform takes no cut and doesn’t charge any fees for the service. Anyone can apply for, or create, an unlimited number of jobs ranging from designing websites, ghostwriting articles, or joining discord chats.

Lend or Stake Crypto to Earn Crypto

MakerDAO CDP (Collateralized Debt Position) enables the generation of DAI stablecoins against the collateral(ETH) that remains locked in a smart contract until the individual pays back the original amount of DAI borrowed. Once the DAI is repaid, plus a small fee, you can withdraw your collateral (initial ETH that was locked up).

As of today, 1.80% of the total Ether supply is currently locked up in MakerDAO CDP smart contracts. Thanks to Mike McDonald, MakerDAO tools provide data and current insights into the MakerDAO system and CDP contracts. Ether can also be added to MakerDAO CDPs by other individuals which creates a wonderful list of possibilities.

Lenders and borrowers are connected via smart contracts safely and securely without the need for intermediaries. The platform has a native token LEND, that if used on the platform as the medium of exchange grants access to zero-fee lending. Cryptoassets used as collateral for loans are stored in a non-custodian depository smart contract on the Ethereum blockchain to obtain high network security. ETHLend is a subsidiary of Aave and the parent company recently opened an office in London.

Compound Finance is an open-source protocol for algorithmic, efficient money markets on the Ethereum blockchain. Most cryptoasset sit idle on an exchange and wallets, yielding zero interest and bringing little benefit to the community. Assets are supplied to the compound finance protocol as opposed to another user, and interest rates are adjusted based on the supply and demand of available assets.

Dharma is a suite of smart contracts and developer tools that make it possible to borrow and lend crypto-assets on Ethereum. The Dharma website has a lengthy list of tutorials that allow people to approve ERC721 tokens for collateral in loans as well a relayer starter kit.

Prediction Markets

Gnosis Olympia, the alpha version of the prediction market provides an environment for participants to try out trading and win GNO tokens as a reward for successful predictions. The Gnosis team has also created an ongoing developer contest, Gnosis X — a recurring challenge designed to encourage developers to build prediction market applications on Gnosis. Winners of the Gnosis X contest can receive up to 100k USD in GNO tokens.

Augur is a decentralized application running on Ethereum that allows individuals to stake crypto(ETH) to make predictions such as who will win the next election, the price of an individual cryptocurrency, or hedge against disaster.

A Pdot index is a price-weighted index derived from a basket of speculative positions in various decentralized prediction markets on Augur (similar to the Dow Jones Industrial Average for U.S. stocks). New derivatives, in this case, based on A-List celebrities have the potential to bring about new markets that change how we perceive value. The Lebron James index is based on individual stats and Laker’s wins, while the Ariana Grande index portfolio uses social media followers and billboard rankings of new songs.

12. Veil

Veil is a peer-to-peer prediction market and derivatives platform built on top of Augur, 0x, and Ethereum. It utilizes the 0x protocol to enhance the trading process by minimizing the number of transactions that are required in the market creation and cancellation process. Veil is also introducing a feature known as “instant settlement” which eliminates the need to wait for market finalization on Augur. Veil recently launched on the Ethereum mainnet on January 15, 2019.

Coming Soon!

The platform will allow anybody to upload predictions, stake them with NMR, and build a track record that everyone will trust. It solves the market collapse problem for prediction feeds and allows a marketplace for predictions to form.

If you know about a live dapp on Ethereum that isn’t on this list comment below! #DeFi

Mason Nystrom, ConsenSys.