
Decentralization in Bitcoin and Ethereum - erwan
http://hackingdistributed.com/2018/01/15/decentralization-bitcoin-ethereum/
======
wyc
We should remember the most often centralized aspect of blockchain projects
promising a fully-decentralized future: the developer teams. They are
typically very centralized with disproportionate power over the network. See
the graphs in the second half of this article:

[https://news.earn.com/quantifying-
decentralization-e39db233c...](https://news.earn.com/quantifying-
decentralization-e39db233c28e)

This isn't necessarily damning, as "everything has to start somewhere," but it
definitely doesn't warrant self-congratulatory pats on the back exclaiming a
decentralized utopia. There's still a lot of work to do, but these projects
might be the furthest along we've seen after open-source software.

~~~
cjslep
It was certainly damning to Ethereum when they forked the currency to rescue
the DAO.

~~~
imustbeevil
Maybe not to the price, but certainly to the movement. A _majority of users_
don't care about decentralization. Ethereum proved that.

The only thing _most people_ want from cryptocurrencies is more USD than they
put in.

Editted to better represent reality.

~~~
cantrip
I think there is certainly a massive amount of uneducated speculation going on
in the crypto currency world, but saying things like "no one cares about
decentralization" shows a foolish lack of knowledge about the whole space.

A lot of very smart people care passionately about decentralization and the
technology is going to change a lot of things. It seems like from your post
history you're going to have to be dragged kicking and screaming into the
future.

~~~
549362-30499
I think there's certainly some interesting ideas happening, but the jury is
still very much out on whether cryptocurrencies even _have_ a future. It's
been several years now and we have... what? Thousands of memes about never
spending your currency because it's going to be worth x1,000,000 in the
future?

~~~
chrisco255
Oh boy, you could say that about any tech that hasn't quite hit mainstream
couldn't you? Including VR/AR and self driving cars, except these technologies
have been around much, much longer (decades) and have yet to go fully
mainstream.

Bitcoin itself is 9 years old. Ethereum is barely 3 years old. Meanwhile,
people are building decentralized trading platforms, prediction markets,
provably fair online casinos, an entirely new venture funding model has been
created, crypto collateralized loans, virtual assets trading, IOT-based supply
chain management, and so much more. You'd realize that if you looked past the
memes, there's something there, it's still very early, but it's growing
rapidly.

------
makomk
For some further context, Ethereum allows miners to vote on block capacity
increases in a way similar to that which some people wanted to add to Bitcoin.
Apparently it's recently started acting like a live demonstration of the
reasons why the Bitcoin developers didn't consider this a good idea:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/7pfshh/why_is_8m_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/7pfshh/why_is_8m_gas_causing_so_many_uncles/)

~~~
alanfalcon
Surely this has more to do with ETH’s very fast block time than the increased
block size in a vacuum?

That is, I don’t see how these same issues that are affecting blocks that come
every ~15s can be used to draw a conclusion about a system whose blocks come
every ~ten minutes.

------
jstanley
As a piece of anecdata: I run a Bitcoin node at home with no troubles, but
I've been totally unable to sync the Ethereum chain. Trying to do so drags my
computer to its knees for hours and doesn't seem to be making very much
progress.

~~~
fearface
Not enough IOPS

~~~
traskjd
That's basically it. My PC that keeps up (and can sync a month of updates in
about an hour) will typically be thrashing an SSD at 55MB/s while using about
15Mbit/s internet.

On an older PC I can't sync, it keeps falling further and further behind. It's
got a slow old spinning rust disk.

As a note, I believe the Geth devs have an update coming where they use more
memory caching which saves smashing the disk so hard during sync.

------
ericb
There is hidden centralization of dev teams and clients in both projects.

Bitcoin core could probably be sunk by covert US government or mafia-esque
intervention with the dev team.

Both bitcoin core and ethereum are monocultures, which makes them much more
vulnerable to black swan bugs.

~~~
konschubert
Nobody is required to run code changes put up by the dev team.

Anyone, anytime can fork the code, and thereby the block chain, and create a
second version of the currency.

The question is: Which one do people attribute value to?

~~~
amarkov
The risk vector isn't that the dev team will push "PR 666: add master key to
all wallets". It's that someone will introduce a subtle bug (such as a side
channel leaking your private key), which goes undetected for months or years,
until it's revealed that they've been slowly siphoning off and selling bitcoin
they weren't entitled to. In a scenario like that, people might not attribute
value to the current chain _or_ the months-old clean one.

------
efesak
I have been running multiple bitcoin and altcoin nodes and still I am not able
to run public geth node synced for month on dedicated server (4c SAS disks).
So if "Bitcoin Underutilizes Its Network" then Ethereum is actively destroying
itself.

~~~
makomk
I hear you basically need a fast SSD to get enough IOPS to sync Ethereum these
days, especially in full archival mode.

~~~
unixhero
I have a very fast server. 500mb/sec write sustained

What's the benefit of running an Etherum node with complete history?

~~~
ShabbosGoy
This is exactly how sidechaining works. I was heavily downvoted in another
thread for suggesting that sidechains can mitigate network “sluggishness” for
more complex Dapps.

------
elmar
this race for the lowest block time is completely madness! what is the use of
having one confirmation if the block could go orphan and your transaction
could be reversed, it's like a placebo efect.

~~~
pmorici
Zero conf transactions are viable on blockchains that don’t have backlogs

~~~
arthurcolle
How so?

~~~
pmorici
You can accept an valid signed transaction with low risk even if it hasn't
confirmed yet because in a blockchain w/o regular massive backlogs the chances
that it doesn't confirm are very low. So for smaller every day transactions
there isn't a need to wait for an actual confirmation.

In a situation as exists with Bitcoin currently it's anyone's guess whether a
transaction will ever confirm because there are HUGE backlogs that haven't
cleared for several months. A transaction has a high chance of being dropped
regardless of the fee being paid because the backlog and fee level required to
get confirmed at all is unpredictable. Bitcoin Core also has what they call
RBF which increases the chance that a dishonest person can double spend an
unconfirmed transaction exponentially. Makes 0-conf transactions unusable on
Bitcoin Core.

------
DennisP
The complaint about Ethereum's uncle rate seems a bit off base, since unlike
Bitcoin, Ethereum's uncles aren't wasted; they contribute to its accumulated
hash count, play a part in fork selection, and reward the miners who make
them.

------
tomerweller
_"...a Byzantine quorum system with 20 nodes would be more decentralized than
Bitcoin or Ethereum with significantly fewer resource costs. Of course, the
design of a quorum protocol that provides open participation, while fairly
selecting 20 nodes to sequence transactions, is non-trivial."_

That's exactly what the Stellar Consensus Protocol (SCP) is:
[https://www.stellar.org/papers/stellar-consensus-
protocol.pd...](https://www.stellar.org/papers/stellar-consensus-protocol.pdf)

(Full disclosure: I work at Stellar)

------
KasianFranks
Crypto has created the first large division I've seen in the software
development community. "Open" has been a way to describe how money is not
necessary except when you need it but never do if you have rich parents or are
catering to old school investors. Crypto provides the first a way for things
to be truly Open.

~~~
n-bluth
> "Open" has been a way to describe how money is not necessary except when you
> need it but never do if you have rich parents or are catering to old school
> investors

I do not understand this.

~~~
KasianFranks
Money has always been viewed as a side-show, dog and pony, a circus if you're
purist software engineer. 30 years in the Valley taught me this along with BBS
protocols sharing and learning with my brethren. GNU also taught us this, the
most remarkable software effort in existence. We have to be open to change and
evolution of software.

One more thing: The guys that wrote this article should be be looking at how
intersections of 2 arrays can be more efficiently calculated. This is the big
one with the blockchain.

------
elmar
the big elephant in the room is that Bitcoin and Ethereum networks have good
latency because the guy in rural Africa simply doesn't mine because he as no
chance of making money, if people in remote regions with very bad connections
entered the game the propagation time to 95% of the network would go to 60s or
more.

------
he0001
A thought in the light of Spectre and meltdown, if we look at distributed
computing as an ooo execution, couldn’t one trick someone to act, and
therefore spill information about something they really shouldn’t or normally
wouldn’t done, because of the “fake” branch being revoked?

