
Introduction to Decentralisation - theocs
https://www.ledgerpath.com/blog/2019/07/introduction-to-decentralisation
======
yuchi
I love how most blockchain related articles I read pass from “baby-talk
description of decentralization and distribution” to “PoW, permissionless,
PoS, miners and mining” in a single swipe.

If I could understand those terms why did you bother to explain such basic
concepts to me in the first place?

If I need to be guided throught those ideas, do you really think I can
comprehend what are you talking about with Proof of Work? (Which is never
spelled in its full words in the article)

<insert face palm emoji>

~~~
Sinidir
I have seen this phenomenon so often in explanations/tutorials of different
things. People seem to not have a concrete target audience in mind. They
simply write of cuff.

~~~
kerkeslager
I'll go one step further: for many slightly-obscure technical topics, the
intermediate writing between beginner and advanced is rare or simply doesn't
exist. I struggled with this when I was trying to learn functional programming
--writing on the subject is mostly linked-lists/lambda/map/reduce/filter, or
όλα είναι ελληνικά για μένα. This goes even for better writers who _do_ have
an audience in mind: their audience is either complete beginners, or people
with advanced academic degrees in the field. It took me years to find writings
that bridge that gap.

~~~
nanomonkey
What material did you find? I too have noticed this gap and been searching.

~~~
kerkeslager
I found a lot of the stuff on Matt Might's blog helpful. He writes a bit about
compiling Scheme to C, which allows me to see what each piece of Scheme is
doing in a language I know.[1] Following this approach, I found LISP In Small
Pieces[2], Compiling With Continuations[3], etc. There's more but I have to
dig it up.

[1] [http://matt.might.net/articles/programming-with-
continuation...](http://matt.might.net/articles/programming-with-continuations
--exceptions-backtracking-search-threads-generators-coroutines/)

[2]
[https://pages.lip6.fr/Christian.Queinnec/WWW/LiSP.html](https://pages.lip6.fr/Christian.Queinnec/WWW/LiSP.html)

[3] [https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/compiling-with-
continua...](https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/compiling-with-
continuations/7CA9C36DCE78AD82218E745F43A4E740)

------
cryptica
>> \- Architectural decentralisation: how many physical computers the system
is made up of? What’s the topology of the network and its geographical
presence?

>> \- Political decentralisation: how many people or entities are in control
of the network?

>> \- Logical decentralisation: does the whole system behave like a single
entity?

>> The take away from Vitalik article, is that all blockchains combines these
three dimensions into one system.

Actually, Vitalik states in his article that individual blockchains are
logically centralized: [https://medium.com/@VitalikButerin/the-meaning-of-
decentrali...](https://medium.com/@VitalikButerin/the-meaning-of-
decentralization-a0c92b76a274). It depends on whether we're talking about a
specific blockchain or the set of all blockchains. That's why I don't agree
with the position of Bitcoin maximalists; their vision is not fully
decentralized. When you factor in the centralization of mining power, BTC is
only architecturally decentralized. Bitcoin is not so different from a
centralized system which has replicas in multiple data centers.

~~~
nfin
It is the architecturally decentralized nature of bitcoin that you mentions,
that can make it become more and more decentralized over time.

You say it is not so different from a centralized system that has replicas in
multiple data centers.

\- if we speak about bitcoin nodes: don't forget that centralized systems can
be shut off very quickly by governements

\- if we speak about miners: new mining pool software is just being developed
(and some of if finalized), that takes away power from pools, and gives it to
the many small miners:

[https://medium.com/hackernoon/betterhash-decentralizing-
bitc...](https://medium.com/hackernoon/betterhash-decentralizing-bitcoin-
mining-with-new-hashing-protocols-291de178e3e0)

and

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/ci2daj/making_mini...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/ci2daj/making_mining_more_decentralized_new_mining_stack/)

~~~
kerkeslager
I think the point cryptica is making is that there is only one, central
blockchain (logical centralization). This has a few centralizing effects on
_political centralization_ which is what most users probably care about:

1\. Governments need only to track one blockchain to track every BTC
transaction. Attempts to deal with this mainly entail coin tumbling, which
involves giving your coins to a centralized trusted entity. Larger tumblers
are more effective, creating an incentive for further centralization.

2\. The central blockchain is a performance bottleneck to event throughput.
Attempts to deal with this mostly have to do with federation, i.e. forcing
people to transact through another entity (usually a company you pay fees to)
if they want faster transactions. Federation is much closer to centralized on
the centralized/decentralized spectrum. Usually companies respect regulation
from centralized government (meaning a government could force them to not
process your transactions) increasing centralization further. And
historically, federation happens unevenly, i.e. a large number of email users
federating under GMail, which creates further centralization.

3\. Mining competition has a very high entry cost because the minimum
investment for entry is very high. The solution to this is pools under a
centralized pool manager who typically collects fees and may or may not
collect data on pool members.

------
cjslep
Blockchains have a single centralized view of data and this view is
distributed worldwide with everyone keeping each other in check. Blockchains
are centralized but distributed in this way.

Federation protocols have different, decentralized views of data and these
views are selectively distributed with peers and distributed in ad hoc ways,
and sometimes peers keep each other in check. Federated protocols are
decentralized and distributed in this way.

------
kryogen1c
>“hypothetically”

Second word of the article and i almost stopped reading. Is this a sarcastic
hypothetical, where what follows is obviously true?

>This is an impossible structure for an organisation to function

So... Why is this "hypothetical" instead of hypothetical?

I suppose im being unreasonable, but i find this extremely offputting and
intrepet as a very unprofessional writing.

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nautilus12
It's weird that decentralized architectures are becoming what the racoons and
quants are now flocking to via means of block chain via means of
cryptocurrency. Seems like they are getting pulled down the buzz word rabbit
hole and we are the only ones the wiser

------
bernardlunn
I call writing “code for the human compiler”. That code should address the
knowledge level of reader. No general purpose article can get that right

------
SiempreViernes
Oh, it was blockchain again. I tought it would be about the political
practice.

~~~
api
... or about a myriad other technologies.

It's sad that cryptocurrency speculation and hype sucked all the air out of
the room vs other decentralized tech.

In the end its leading to a condition where decentralized equals Ponzi finance
scheme in the minds of many people.

