Topic: Is my crypto decentralized? - page 4. (Read 3406 times)

Perhaps it will help we agree on a definition of decentralization in this context.

• Some might say something is decentralized if it does not have a central point of control.
• Others might say something is not decentralized until is can not be decentralized any further.
• Many might argue that decentralization is a process that operates on a continuum between the two.

On the prior thread where all this has been debated before, the OPer wrote:


From this, I assume he would agree that there are, in fact, degrees of decentralization.   

So, starting from that point of profound agreement, it may help to propose some new terms to clarify our discourse.  To that end, and without further preamble, I offer the world:


1.  Barely Decentralized. A system moves from one point of control to several.  The separation of powers of the US government into three branches could be called "barely decentralized."

2.  Fully Decentralized.  A system is fully decentralized when you can't think of a way to decentralize it any further.

3.  Manageably Decentralized.  A system is engineered to achieve a practical span of control by delegating it downward until people can keep track of everything that is going on.

4.  Plausibly Decentralized.  Decentralized enough to satisfy the general public that control cannot be seized by somebody bad.  Nuclear missile launch authority is deemed plausibly decentralized if two officers are needed to launch having received a verification code from a command authority.

5.  Sufficiently Decentralized.  A system is sufficiently decentralized if it achieves the goals of its designer.  A crypto system is sufficiently decentralized if, in combination with all other design features, it is not possible to gain control of the system to the point of causing it to shut down or malfunction in a sustained and unrecoverable way.

6.  Over Decentralized.  A system is over decentralized if costs more or takes longer to implement than one that is Sufficiently Decentralized.

7.  Under Decentralized.  A system is under decentralized if it is less Over Decentralized than the system you prefer.

A system decentralized to any one of these degrees can be called "decentralized".  If you want to be more precise you can throw in one of the above adjectives.

Anyone can't participate in security. Only 101.

Campaigning, competing, waiting, on standby don't do anything for security.

There is an imposed limit on the level of decentralisation of BitShares, there's no doubts there. 

Anyone can participate though, the standby nodes aren't just waiting, they compete and campaign to get voted in. 

Decentralisation is a function of the participants in the network. Limiting the number of participants, limits the decentralisation.  I wouldn't call anything that prevents you participating as decentralised.

Don't you want Bitshares to be a global technology? If you do, 3 billion people under 101 nodes is the reality you have to consider.

There are 101 nodes in BitShares who can be voted out by stakeholders and thousands of standby nodes at the ready.  That is the fact of the matter.

How many nodes are required to fit for your definition of decentralised?  

The idea that BitShares needs to be able to handle 3 billion users is a straw man.  That level of crypto use could be 20 or 30 years away, no one I know of has claimed BitShares or any crypto can scale scale straight to that level.



How does anyone in the world create a node and get elected into a network for the US treasury?

By only sending transactions to the next node that forges rather than all nodes. This means netwotk traffic drops to small fraction of what it would be, keeping forging within reach or ordinary people.

How can you avoid this?

Here is the kicker, DE  was right when he said this is a solution looking for a problem.

There are already platforms where each node could be run for $30 a year or less, when running at visa levels of transactions.

This capped node system forces a compromise out of ignorance or a desire for profit. It sounds like you are happy to have the economy of 3 billion people in the hands of 101 nodes. Do you run a node?

Cutting to the chase.
The question is: Is Bitshares sufficiently decentralised/distributed to be regarded as a peer-to-peer crypto-currency, or is it in fact a centralised financial system like Ripple or the US treasury ?

101 delegates is not very many on a global scale, these people would become insanely wealthy if BTS achieved global adoption.
I believe that BTS cannot be described as decentralised, simply due to the amount of control of the BTS network being concentrated in so few nodes, and the barriers that have to be overcome to become a node operator.

In NXT, anyone with a fistful of NXT and a spare PC (or VPS) can run a node, forge, contribute to the network and earn fees. Anyone. Obviously, the guys with more NXT will earn more, but there are no barriers whatsoever to setting up and running a NXT node.
Similarly, anyone with a mining rig could (at one time) contribute to the BTC network and mine BTC while securing the blockchain, again no barriers at all, no need to ask permission from anyone.

It's this level of control that makes BTS centralised, they are a (semi-) corporate project, and not a genuine peer-to-peer crypto-currency. Sorry......

When BitShares scales to Visa proportions it will cost something like 5000$ a month to run one Delegate, that's already $500 000 a month cost for decentralization. It goes without saying that you can only increase decentralization so much before these costs will prevent you from being competitive. If we go from 100 to 1000 Delegates at that point in time cost will increase from over 5 million dollars a year to over 50 million dollars. Perhaps it will be worth it, perhaps not - what transaction-fees would you tolerate for this increase in decentralization?

There is no either/or situation here, just economic rationality and navigation between brute realities.

We are not talking semantics, we are talking realities.

Dan Larimer believes 101 nodes is 'sufficient decentralisation'. So presumably, he would prefer the 101 node limit to never be increased?


3 billion people bound to a system reliant on 101 nodes getting millions of dollars in income each (which is the plan). Decentralised? I don't think so, few here would. It is a system that tends towards centralisation.

http://wiki.bitshares.org/index.php/DPOS_or_Delegated_Proof_of_Stake#Scalability

There are hard realities we have to face.

When systems scale they become centralized for economic reasons.

It doesn't help to insist on semantics and theories when in practice you end up with worse solutions.

Daniel Larimer in his two blog posts shows why DPOS is the better option when we look on how NXT, PPC and BTC are operating in practice.

Let me put it another way..

Pretend it has been a huge success and 3 billion people are using it. You've successfully got the devs to hard fork the delegate cap up to 2500. How is this better than the system we have today with governments,  lobbyists, finance industry, oligarchs etc... ? Do you believe these groups don't collude today?

In this system, 2500 have all the economic power. Is this decentralisation?

Another blog post,

http://bytemaster.bitshares.org/article/2015/01/07/The-Most-Decentralized-Proof-of-Stake-System/

We are going around in circles.

No one is calling Bitshares centralised. They are saying it isn't decentralised.

It is this kind of soft headed thinking and misdirection that I have come to expect.


In this case, marginal utility = increasing decentralisation. Putting an artificial cap, selected arbitrarily creates a distributed network. It can't scale efficiently as the network grows.

If 1000 users are voting for 101 nodes, a year later there are 2000 users without the cap being raised then as the economy grows there is increasing centralisation. You can only raise the number of nodes with the devs permission, who are recipients of income from running a node. So they have to accept less income for it to happen.

The incentives are working against growth in the system. At least for those who value decentralisation.

Core Dev. just wrote a blog post about this topic,

http://bytemaster.bitshares.org/article/2015/01/09/How-to-Measure-the-Decentralization-of-Bitcoin/

Two posts and there could be 50+ Nxters in here who definately wouldn't say it is decentralised.  They would describe it as distributed, in the same camp as Ripple.

But what would be the point of that?


Bitshares definition 'sufficiently distributed' = 'distributed' in mainstream crypto. The core dev refers to it as distributed.

Node owners like StanLarimer seem to be promoting it as decentralized as they see marketing value in it, which feeds into their own bottom line. ~$2500 a month roughly in Stans case.

When your own thread backfires. lel

Forking here refers to a situation where you are unhappy with the current situation and want to break away, in a schism. Thinking about it, this would be true for any crytpo too so is irrelevant and I will remove it.

The rest is accurate, from my lengthy discussion with Stanlarimer, Testz, Sumantsu, yourself and others.


99.9% of my posts are supporting Nxters. It would be undisclosed/underhand if I started a new account with zero post history. But this isn't about Bitshares or Nxt but decentralization and what it means. A point you continue to miss. Once we had confirmed what the community thought this meant, we could have had a better discussion.

But you have made sure that that doesn't happen.