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I understand your argument, but it cannot be shown to be more valid than the complete opposite: the less centralized a system is, the more complex it is in term
by pron 8y ago
I understand your argument, but it cannot be shown to be more valid than the complete opposite: the less centralized a system is, the more complex it is in terms of protocols, and you need to trust many more people to design it correctly than you would need to trust to operate a centralized system. In fact, it could be argued that beyond some complexity level, an unbreakable design is virtually impossible, even in principle.
Your argument about an appealing target could also be used to show the exact opposite: decentralized systems are much harder to upgrade, and so they become attractive targets which you need to break much less frequently (especially considering that the internet backbone itself is pretty centralized), and so it makes even very expensive cracking more affordable. The argument about open-source applies pretty much equally to the centralized and decentralized case.
- zzzcpan 8y ago> the less centralized a system is, the more complex it is in terms of protocols, and you need to trust many more people to design it correctly I disagree with that. The more centralized system is, the less trust boundaries it has and more vulnerable and insecure it is, because penetrating one trust boundary gives access to everything. Security always requires additional complexity. And decentralization forces you to take that complexity seriously for once, something you neglect, not simplify, in centralized insecure designs. Forcing you to deal with just trust explicitly and systematically leads to much more secure designs. Other than that decentralized systems are exactly the same as centralized, just with more players and choices and incentives not to break anyone's trust. The only problem is all that embrace, extend crap large corporations always attempt to pull off and recentralize everything.
- pron 8y ago> because penetrating one trust boundary gives access to everything The same could be true for a decentralized system if the flaw is in the centralized backbone or the shared protocols/algorithms.