2 ms·
It's the ironic twist at the heart of crypto: a centralized system built on implicit trust and community standards is actually required to build a functioning e
by skywhopper 8y ago
It's the ironic twist at the heart of crypto: a centralized system built on implicit trust and community standards is actually required to build a functioning economy. Participating in any particular blockchain is only as valuable as the community around it. So while forking is always an option, a fork will only be worth following if comes with a functional community with agreed-upon standards.
So you can (try to) decentralize the process of verifying that everyone is playing fair (whatever that means in your system), but so long as you all want to trade with each other, you must have a centralized authority of some sort, to decide what "playing fair" means.
- jpadkins 8y agoI think this was understood even in the earliest days of bitcoin. The centralized system of "playing fair" was the protocol, which as you point out, is a centralized community standard. Blockchain is independent actors following a common protocol. If the actors don't follow the centralized, common protocol then the economy disintegrates.