Topic: Would it be better for us to call Bitcoin 'pseudo-decentralised'? (Read 2696 times)

Hmm, this is interesting. This might be a good argument for the word decentralised. But isn't the bitcoin network full of nodes in a distributed fashion? Or is each node like the 'decentralised' diagram in your picture?

Either way, this is a good post with a good source of evidence on how to properly use 'decentralised'. As I read the link I'm thinking that decentralised as the article outlines does describe bitcoin.


The mining pools do have authority as outlined in this article.

If we accept this then we're left with bitcoin being decentralised but not trustless.

"decentralized" already sufficiently describes that BTC is currently not distributed.



http://www2.cffn.ca/usha/part-iii-article-by-pramod-dhakal/129-the-law-of-rule-centralized-decentralized-and-distributed-systems

I think Franky enjoys telling people they're wrong on the forum here.

Actually, I beleive a miner with >50% is much more serious than you have written there:


Source: http://hackingdistributed.com/2014/06/16/how-a-mining-monopoly-can-attack-bitcoin/

Bitcoin is decentralized because there is no central authority that controlls/says who owns how many coins.

Absent a 51% attack bitcoin would not be considered a centralized payment method in any way. Even if one pool operator controlled 60% of the hashrate the other 40% of the miners would still control 40% of the blocks and would enforce the rules of the Bitcoin protocall.

Even in a 51% attack the attacker could not create bitcoin out of thin air, nor could they process a TX that the "owner" of the sending address did not sign/agree to. They would only be able to reverse a TX

lol, don't need to be so brutal.. but it is kinda funny that he's being pedantic yet doesn't know the difference between you're and your.

i once had a guy tell me "your redicules." 

If you're going to correct his spelling, make sure you know the difference between your and you're first.  

Here's a quick lesson from 1st grade English class:

Your = Posessive.  Shows ownership.  (Can I have your car?)
You're = Contraction of You + Are.  (You're going to use that word?)

In fact your entire sentence was a disaster.  I think this is what you were going for:   "If you're going to use the word, learn how to spell it first".

-B-

i don't think that is quite accurate. you could say the same about everything else that is decentralized, like fiat currency. it doesn't matter who is controlling it, but rather that someone is and has to control it.. therefore it is decentralized.

Pseudo-anonymity + pseudo-decentralization = Bitcoin (pseudo-coin) 

Sure, the human levels of things like the political situation with the dev team and the Bitcoin Foundation are somewhat a march towards centralisation. But that's not the same as being technically centralised like I outlined in my last post. Where the network itself relies on the trust of a single actor.

But I do agree with you that over all the bitcoin community and the bitcoin business establishment is slowly consolidating. That might not necessarily be the worst thing for the currency in terms of widespread adoption. But we'll have to wait it out and see how well these organizations and companies can perform. Gox at one point was another human level centralisation of Bitcoin, and look how that turned out.

yeah it's not really decentralized, and it's also not really anonymous either. as for the part where it's not decentralized, i don't see how it can be any other way - someone needs to be able to dictate where bitcoins, since it's not self-sustaining. new issues arise and there has to be someone who deals with it.

He wasn't aware of pools when he designed bitcoin and laid the foundations of the protocol. It wasn't till much later when bitcoin was already well established that pools went from theory to reality. Pools were invented to solve the problem of variance in mining as I'm sure you're aware. But variance was never a major issue in 2009 and thus there was no problem to be solved.

The problem of centralisation and trust has existed for a long time now. I specifically remember the community having the same outrage over Deepbit having almost half the hashing power on the network despite Deepbit having fees of 10%.

Ever since the original Deepbit debacle bitcoin has relied on trust being placed in mining pools that hold significant hashing power.

How can bitcoin be described as trustless and decentralised if we rely on a centralised power not to attack the system? I understand that it's not likely that a mining pool will attempt such an attack, and that it's almost never in their economic interest. However that doesn't negate the fact that the system still trusts that single actor to act rationally.

Given the the fact that the value of bitcoin still thrives it would seem that the market has decided that this is an acceptable level of trust and centralisation.

But the market accepting a certain level of risk does not change the fact that the risk itself is the risk of trusting a centralised actor. Thus Bitcoin is not a trustless decentralised currency but a pseudo-decentralised one.

Bitcoin is a decentralized digital currency. It is at the "human-levels" where you are seeing the march toward centralization.

He was aware of the concept of pools, and he was aware of the possibility of someone gaining more than 50% of the hashing power:


I suspect that the concept of a pool acquiring more than 50% of the hashing power didn't go over his head.  It's clear that he expected the financial incentives to protect the network regardless. At least with a pool, the people leasing their hash power to the pool can choose to leave.  That makes a pool with more than 50% far more secure than Satoshi assumed a lone individual with more than 50% would be.

Right, that was just weeks before he disappeared. Prior to that mining pools were not something that was on his radar. He clearly didn't take into account the dangers of mining pools controlling large percentages of the network.

At that point mining pools were a novel addition to bitcoin and the full impact of their existence obviously wasn't considered.

That was just a typo in the title. You can see that I spelled pseudonymous and centralised correctly in the post. I was worried about running out of characters in the title. I'm not sure exactly how many the forum allows.

Although if a hyphen is appropriate I'll note that for future reference.

if your going to use the word, spell it first

pseudo-decentralised

I've read a fair amount of Satoshi's posts and I remember that he didn't envision mining pools. He did consider botnets however and he didn't see them as a threat.

If decentralised is a fair description then surely 'trustless' can not be considered fair at this point. Since we're inherently trusting any mining pool with 33% or over not to attempt an attack.

I'd argue that relying on a central point of trust makes the word 'decentralised' a poor descriptor. But it is a distributed network.

And I also agree that it is unlikely that any changes will be made at the protocol level. However I continue to hope that enough people can work together to find solutions and that the dev team will actually implement those solutions.

Actually it is evolving almost exactly the way Satoshi had envisioned.  Have you read the things Satoshi has written?


Decentralized is a fair description.


This is unlikely.


As far as I know, all altcoins use some sort of proof-of-"X" system of reaching consensus where weaknesses are introduced if any single entity controls a significant percentage of resource "X".