Topic: How to measure blockchain decentralization? (Read 240 times)

Exactly. There are so many projects claiming to be decentralized, but the way they're organized tells us otherwise. Newcomers into crypto are made to believe everything is decentralized, when in fact, it is not. Only a very small portion of Blockchain networks are as decentralized as they claim to be. Bitcoin is the most decentralized cryptocurrency in the world with a vast number of nodes and miners supporting it every step of the way. The project has no leading figure, unlike Ethereum. True decentralization is what makes crypto achieve its purpose in the real world. Without it, you'd get nothing more than a traditional banking system manipulated by the likes of a few.

Unfortunately, not everyone cares about decentralization these days. The vast majority of projects will go down the drain as governments will be able to take them down easily. Only Bitcoin, Ethereum, and some other old cryptocurrencies will be able to survive in the long run. The crypto land is in urgent need of decentralization to help prevent governments and banks from taking over the entire ecosystem. Centralized exchanges have done more harm than good to crypto's decentralization, so the future looks bleak right now. There's hope things will go back the way they were with decentralized exchanges and other solutions. Time will tell us what will lie ahead with crypto/Blockchain tech's prominence in the mainstream world. Just my thoughts

If the project owners do not have too much control over the blockchain itself then it is a blockchain decentralization. It doesn't mean they can't improve it, they could do it if the public wants to, like ethereum is decentralized but we are moving to 2.0, does that mean it is not decentralized just because we are moving from PoW to PoS? No of course not, it is still decentralized and everything depends on what public wants to, if we didn't want to move to 2.0 then we wouldn't move to it, it is just an "offer" from the developers that we will most likely accept.

If creators of it suggest something but can't force people to do it, then it is a good decentralization and works perfectly like intended.

I would say BTC is by far the biggest because its ranked one and decentralized fully, followed by ETH, and I believe monero is undervalued right now and not appreciated enough.

1. The concept of decentralization is not new, but the technology behind blockchain will bring it to a whole new level,  It’s being implemented around the world for various uses including serving as a foundation for cryptocurrencies.
2. The cryptocurrency space is in the all-out war when it comes to decentralization, There are many ways to measure decentralized structures, including the “godlike concept” and economic blockchains with voting mechanism (Voting with dollar protocol) to address the issue of consensus in public chains)
3. The coinmarketcap website just tracks the price and volume of individual cryptocurrencies with ease and accuracy – giving investors greater capital gain exposure than traditional assets.

Decentralization is a synonym to Bitcoin because it can't be controlled by anyone, not even a government can manage to destroy it because its peer to peer and is managed by the consensus which the users are part of.

There are projects claiming to be decentralized but the level of decentralization only belongs to the ecosystem but if the government interferes with the team, they may be able to point a gun at the heads of the CEO. The known teams with CEOs I guess you can consider the underdogs.

Glad you asked. Here are the answers to your questions:

1. Decentralization in a blockchain means that no single person, third-party or entity has control over the network. There's no middleman involved in the system whatsoever. You and only you are responsible of securing your crypto funds on a public blockchain network accessible to anyone, anywhere in the world.

2. Blockchain decentralization is measured by the number of nodes available on the network. The more nodes there are, the more decentralized a blockchain network will be. Decentralization is improved when nodes are not concentrated in a single area. By being geographically distributed, the blockchain can achieve true censorship-resistance.

Consensus algorithms also play an important factor on a Blockchain's decentralization. PoW is considered to be the most decentralized consensus algorithm compared to PoS and even DPoS. But it's energy-intensive and slow. The other algorithms (mainly PoS and DPoS) are energy-efficient and faster, but are less decentralized. DPoS is known to be utterly-centralized where a small number of validators have control over the entire network. EOS is a good example of a blockchain network with such centralized consensus algorithm.

3. If you mean Blockchain network, then you answer would be Bitcoin. No other coin compares to Bitcoin when it comes to achieving a high level of decentralization and censorship-resistance. Even Ethereum is not as decentralized as Bitcoin is. Coinmarketcap simply reflects a cryptocurrency's price and market capitalization. It does NOT determine how successful a coin is or how well it's adopted in the mainstream world. Newcomers usually follow cryptocurrencies based on their market cap without doing their own research about them. It's a pity since there are many good projects out there that are often unnoticed because of their low market cap.

Hope this helps.

Decentralisation for me means that there is no center that can rule this system. It gives users freedom and security. This way only we can control our money, so we are the only ones in charge.
To measure the decentralisation I just need to know how many miners/validators are in this crypto, who can get new coins and also how many holders. Also we should check what percentage of coins of circulating supply is in the wallet of one the biggest whale.

For me decentralisation means that nobody controls my money and nobody can steal or block my money if I haven’t made a mistake.
The main indicator of decentralisation is an absence of owners and a big number of miners or validators. Also when there is a mechanism of governance, all users of blockchain can take part in accepting decisions.
For me the most decentralised blockchain now is surely Bitcoin.

Yes, but with more nodes the decentralization wiil be more for example lets take bitcoin network on that the nodes are all over the world so its impossible to control those nodes so bitcoin network is highly decentralized. Whereas Binance smart chain is operated by very few nodes that is why it is centralized.

For me a blockchain is really decentralized when the by far biggest majority of the coins is distributed amongst as many holders as possible, because if there are a few wallets that hold a huge amount of coins then they have the Power to manipulate the blockchain. They could for example manage that a block that is actually invalid geht's still validated and therefore accepted by the blockchain consensus. How to measure the decentralisation is also pretty easy. Just look at the top wallets and how many coins they own.

Not only for masternodes or Proof of Stake. It is applicable for Proof of Work coins. Whales or humpbacks can dominate the market with huge coins they own.

You ask of decentralization and it does not restrict to network hashrates, developments but coin distribution and market manipulation. Elon Musk chose Dogecoin because he knows he can be the biggest manipulator in Dogecoin community.

See the centralized Binance Smart Chain with very little validators and many of available validators belong to Binance.

Decentralization in general is against centralization, we can say that it is the rule of the people against the rule of the absolute king, decentralization means that everyone has the ability to participate in decision-making, the decision cannot be taken by only one person and this means that no one can control the network decentralization.
The strength of decentralization can be measured through the expansion of the network and the number of participants in voting or decision-making. The larger the number, the greater the strength of decentralization. If the power is gathered in the hands of a person or group of people, the network will inevitably become centralized, so it is necessary to distribute the network power to the largest possible number. to ensure decentralization.

1) Also these nodes should have different ownership.
2) Well, amount of help and influence of these nodes might vary.
3) What does it mean to be "truly decentralised"?

1) What makes you confident that you control your funds?
2) A good observation.
3) So the status of being the pioneer is the only thing that makes Bitcoin so good?

= transparency and immutability of data, number of nodes is a measure.
A good point. However, the number of full nodes could change over time. It's not an inherent property of the protocol. Also one party can control multiple nodes.

1- Good description.
2- Yes, but that depends on the situation. The same amount of work would give you less power than 10 years ago if we talk about Bitcoin.
3- A good remark. Delegates often have more voting power than those whom they represent.

1) Yes, it's very important for PoS networks. However, sometimes it could be hard to figure out whether two coins are controlled by the same party.
2) So when developers abandoned Dogecoin its decentralization has been broken?
3) A good observation, however, the number of nodes and their ownership might get changed, while the rules of the protocol are set in stone.

1) My Funds My Control; Only I'm the central authorization for my funds. The wallet is my vault and only I'm the supreme authorizer of my won vault.

2) It depends on various factors, hope you will get that.
a- The more miners worked together to compromise with the blockchain system, the more decentralised Bitcoin will be.
b- The more block will be mined, the uncertainty of the distribution of mining power will auto increased as well decentralisation will be increased.
c- Another measurement is the possibility of a "51%-attack"; it is 100% impossible to control more than 50% of total mining power for a group of people. It ensures the security and decentralisation of Bitcoin.

3) Bitcoin is the pioneer, So no one will be able to take over it.

Yea ... there is always something to make FUD from. In 2021 we have china centralization FUD, and china ban FUD. When someone says that bitcoin is centralized because of big part of bitcoin hashing power comes from China I always anwer the same way:

tytanowy explanation is the closest to what i believe count as decentralization. however, some people decide to separate voting power/decision making and network, which sometimes result in a blurry debate. it is apparent when people talk about how bitcoin is centralized because most miners are running their rig in china, and so on. imo mining location is not the core of the decentralization, since you can easily remove one location but the network is still going to survive albeit the scalability might be affected in short-term.

IMO decentralization means if the data will be stored into the various nodes and these noders were connecting from one to each other to build the network as a sharing data.
The only fairest way to measure it based on how many nodes that were helping to run the blockchain.

It must bitcoin bitcoin, and it seems like there was no blockchain that truly decentralized other than bitcoin. Ethereum may become the second one but it has less nodes compared with bitcoin

Hard to say but decentralization are from
- Coin or token distribution: it needs to be as much decentralized as possible
- Developer team should be big as part of decentralization
- Validators or nodes on the network should be in high total number and be decentralized in ownership and geographical locations
More but I think above are basic things.

1- situation in which voting power is spread between the biggest amount of nodes with the least amount of voting power centralized inside biggest nodes. Best sytuation will be each node has symilar voting power but its hard to achive that because of Sybil attack.

2- there is no unified tool but I would say - how much, out of biggest nodes, owns majority of network and how much work it takes to become one of them.

3- All types of delegated "proof of whatever" is always less decentralized than "proof of whatever". So fast coins like BSC are less decentralized than ETH. In terms of the most decentralized chain i'll call bitcoin for top1 but ... IDENA looks to be interesting pick also. Super low cap now but its interresting tech. Its innovative chain that is backed by Proof of Person protocol. Already 8000 nodes. Turing test is responsible to block people from owning multiple nodes. Worth to read more about it.

In my own words and shortest explanation, decentralization is an ecosystem where peer to peer method is being utilized without intervention of government and third party group.

Kinda agree but there is something more technical than this that sometime served as an anomaly.

Like the other guy said. But fairly I pick bitcooin and ethereum network for that matter, those two are totally lead the decentralized space of crypto

Oh, sorry, I was referring to the popular website where "coinmarketcaps" are listed.
Thank you for your reply.

1) Decentralization for me and you is same, the data should be transparent and can't be erased that is what we call a decentralized blockchain.

2) The level of decentralization increases when the number of nodes increases so more the number then its not possible to attack the network.

3) Coinmarketcap is not related to blockchain, its just the value per coin multiples by the total circulation.

Dear Bitcointalk forum community,
I want you to share your thoughts on the following questions of the hour:
1) What is blockchain decentralization for you? How do you understand this concept?
2) How to measure blockchain decentralization? What is a fair way to measure decentralization of different blockchain protocols?
3) What blockchain protocol represented on Coinmarketcap is the most decentralized one at this moment? Who are underdogs of this nomination?
Everyone is welcome to share his or her opinion.