Topic: Explain me Like I'm 5 why Bitcoin is decentralized - page 2. (Read 4018 times)

and the problem is that we have hashing monopolies.  Is this really money for the people?  No, it isn't.

this is why I invented Confidence Chains.  Doesn't require mining but it is distributed/p2p.

see: COIN_DUST.


in my view, it has diverged from the initial intentions of the project.  Various groups latched on, the 'mining' industry, various services groups, ,etc.  It's looking more and more like a traditional payment network every day.  This is why I'm not interested in working on the core Bitcoin.  In order to manage the ever growing volume of transactions, they will need to compromise more and more of the initial Satoshi architecture goals.  Proof of Work is a failure.

as the COIN_DUST incident shows, the developers have the power to introduce changes to the default code to actually discriminate against certain transactions.  In my view, this change was warranted(and generally well intended) because people were abusing the block chain.  It also showed however that the developers do wear badges here and the playing field is not level.

Fixed that for u.

Very much how the current situation is.

Its decentralized because it is the only way to prevent one (or a few) to take control. Its kind of like a forced democracy I guess.
The majority has to agree to any changes in order for those changes to work, basically.

Nobody in the network should agree to downgrade or upgrade without considering the changes.
Strictly speaking, the community as a whole is the foundation, and should be the ones to accept or reject a change.

My understanding (correct me if I am wrong) is that the payment protocol is less than 1000 LoC (so not a huge undertaking) and that it has been designed so that another system (instead of the CA one) can be easily put in place.

I am not a Foundation member nor am I any sort of sycophant of any of the devs but I don't think that they have "lost the plot" at this stage (although I do think that scalability is probably the main thing they should be focused on now).

It was *agreed* to by all the major pools - so I fail to see how that is a dictatorship (unless you include all the major pools as being the dictators).

If they were dedicated to fixing the blockchain they would have more than one dev working on it Peter is the only one working on the problem. But now Gavin is focusing on his this payment protocol. We are in beta and he is adding more protocols to a beta, and the protocol is already broken. It requires a centralized CA. So if you can call bitcoin decentralized then go for it, but it isn't and I don't call it decentralized anymore when I explain it people. I call it p2p that is the correct term for it.

It is probably a good move, but can't you sense this is a dictatorship?

Well - a good retort (and I know you like to argue) - I think that the model of wasting blockchain space did need to be stopped but for sure maybe it hasn't worked perfectly. As far as "taking down the capitalist" I think that Bitcoin gambling sites are still doing very well.

Being decentralized in concept doesn't mean that centralization is impossible, simply that it is not essential.
Decentralized model also doesn't imply that the changes to its structure are sound.
These changes may favor centralization (think single-celled organisms evolving into multi-celled organisms).
Does this help?

You don't recall all the complaints about SD and people running out of disk space?

It they did nothing about it then I am 100% sure you would be complaining about that now.

2 words : Liberty Reserve.

Well yes - it was exactly that which I had mentioned - and clearly no-one forced anyone - the pools agreed that the best solution was to go back to the rules of the previous version (the most sensible way it could have been resolved).

I removed my comment coz it was already discussed upthread.

So how exactly did they force anyone to change software?

Who understand's the internet who uses it? People who have a big stack in Bitcoin understand it or pay people to understand it. No worry.

it seems we already have a central organization called bitcoin foundation  
Bitcoin protocol is not like http , we store money in blockchain , it's our property . So all bitcoin users have right to vote on every little changes of Bitcoin protocol .

@franky1,porcupine87

Thanks! I understand what you both wrote.
But the fact is that there must be a lot of people understanding the code thoroughly to keep it truly decentralized.

Most people (me included) just download the software and use it.

If for example there were only 10 people on earth who understands the protocol and the rest didn't know anything, they could have easily unite and screw us all. they would say that they have improved the protocol and the rest would simply follow.

My conclusion from this thread is that the only way to make/keep bitcoin decentralized is to have sufficient amount of people who understands the protocol and can warn the community if the known developers tries to hurt it.

Like everything else in our world ( and especially our monetary system), it all depends on education.

explain it like your 5..

normally money is stored in a computer located in one place, the bank you first registered your identity information to.
although you can view your balance at many banks and ATM's and withdraw from them. your money is stored in one computer and simply sends balance or accepted withdraw requests from your bank to the destined ATM. the ATM does not store the balances of any/all bank accounts. this is called centralised.

however bitcoin has no single computer of storage, everyone using bitcoin has a copy of your balance, along with everyone elses balance.

imagine it like a special ATM in your house that DOES has a copy of everyones banking details on it and all the ATM's talk to eachother without a bank at the center. and they are all secured using a very very long password so that you cant take other peoples money and they cannot take yours without knowing this password.

using this long password you can do what you want with your money and the ATM's talk to each other so that they all get an updated copy of everyones balance. it does take about 10 minutes to confirm to the majority of ATM's that your balance change is correct and not an error/duplicate transaction.

if you made your own alterations to your ATM. and told everyone on this forum, advertised it on TV and everyone seen that your ATM was actually better then the satoshi dev team's version then just by telling people where to get hold of your version would make you become the dominant ATM being used. (if they chose to that is)

it is a freedom of choice for anyone to make, there is no power to prevent any user from not using the satoshi version, your version or any other persona version. its all about individuals choice. there is no leader to decide for you.

you may however find some smart people that see problems with your ATM and explain it to the community whom may not realise such problems exist.

this is the beauty of open source and decentralisation.