4 ms·

Great points, and thanks for recapping others' illuminating points about government. I recently attended Ethereum DevCon and heard a succinct definition of dec

Great points, and thanks for recapping others' illuminating points about government. I recently attended Ethereum DevCon and heard a succinct definition of decentralization from Prof. David Lee Kuo Chuen that I've been pondering in the week since: "Decentralization is dynamic, continuous distribution of trust." This may be the core of why people are excited about new consensus algorithms like blockchain: we've seen how static, centralized systems of trust distribution eventually break, and the discontinuity of trust that results is very harmful to societies (e.g. bad kings, bad presidents, corruption in parties, collusion of central banks, hacked central servers, etc.) I think we are still in very early days (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVZxjVJz4ds https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVZxjVJz4ds haha) but "blockchain" is the beginning of something new that has to do with helping solve social issues in a new way, with dynamic distribution of trust at the center of that solution.

XorNot 8y ago
Except "blockchain" doesn't decentralize anything. It's decentralized in the sense that none of the big powers of the world care to try and take over things like Bitcoin, but it is fundamentally based on rewarding those who can gather the most autonomous resources. Blockchains are one of the worst methods to decentralize anything, because they don't require any consensus from the "governed" - they do exactly what whoever has ansible/puppet/chef connected to the most computers wants them to do. EDIT: Let's put a very real example on this - if blockchains controlled anything powerful, then there becomes two superpowers - nvidia and AMD. All they do is retool their business cycle so GPUs coming off the line go into N-months of burn-in doing blockchain things in an air-conditioned warehouse, and then get on-sold to consumers. Blockchains reward compute capacity, and nothing else.
- canadaduane 8y ago
  I was careful to avoid the use of the term "blockchain" as a final achievement because I agree with you regarding current limitations of our technology as a means of decentralized consensus. I see a future where more efficient algorithms supplant the current (very costly) blockchain BFT architecture.

XorNot 8y ago

Except "blockchain" doesn't decentralize anything. It's decentralized in the sense that none of the big powers of the world care to try and take over things like Bitcoin, but it is fundamentally based on rewarding those who can gather the most autonomous resources. Blockchains are one of the worst methods to decentralize anything, because they don't require any consensus from the "governed" - they do exactly what whoever has ansible/puppet/chef connected to the most computers wants them to do. EDIT: Let's put a very real example on this - if blockchains controlled anything powerful, then there becomes two superpowers - nvidia and AMD. All they do is retool their business cycle so GPUs coming off the line go into N-months of burn-in doing blockchain things in an air-conditioned warehouse, and then get on-sold to consumers. Blockchains reward compute capacity, and nothing else.

canadaduane 8y ago
I was careful to avoid the use of the term "blockchain" as a final achievement because I agree with you regarding current limitations of our technology as a means of decentralized consensus. I see a future where more efficient algorithms supplant the current (very costly) blockchain BFT architecture.