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There's an emerging field of Computer Science as Economics Discipline. That's the field of cryptocurrency. It is currently plagued with (pseudo) economists and

There's an emerging field of Computer Science as Economics Discipline. That's the field of cryptocurrency. It is currently plagued with (pseudo) economists and scammers. Or people don't really understand system design (but they don't know it). It deals with money so there is a lot of misinformation and greed. People in crypto don't understand the design tradeoff between centralization and decentralization. So they end up selling fake dreams like decentralization can fix everything. Bitcoin is decentralized at layer 1. But in layer 2, people still want to have the same level of decentralization when they design the Lightning Network. Then, some will buy into the idea that LN will fix everything and still be decentralized.

brachi 7y ago
> People in crypto don't understand the design tradeoff between centralization and decentralization. Care to elaborate about that trade-off? And could you be a little more specific on who is 'crypto people? (e.g. everyone from users of a crypto systems, core developers, etc.).
- dnprock 7y ago
  In system design, there are tradeoffs. You can't automagically get everything you want. For example, regarding the block size, you can increase the block size to scale transactions or you can do L2 off-chain. Each comes with its own pros and cons. Big blocks are easier to implement and simpler to set up, but they'll require future hard forks. Off-chain scaling is more flexible but they are a lot more complicated. Big block retains decentralization feature. Off-chain scaling will require some centralization in layer 2 to bring the cost down. Both are fine scaling strategies. But the discussion becomes highly political. One side needs to win. And there's DeFi, decentralized finance. It's more like centralized finance dressed up in tech jargon. When you add more layers on top of the main chains, the complexity of the systems increase. To bring down the costs, you'll have to create centralized layer 2 systems.

brachi 7y ago

> People in crypto don't understand the design tradeoff between centralization and decentralization. Care to elaborate about that trade-off? And could you be a little more specific on who is 'crypto people? (e.g. everyone from users of a crypto systems, core developers, etc.).

dnprock 7y ago
In system design, there are tradeoffs. You can't automagically get everything you want. For example, regarding the block size, you can increase the block size to scale transactions or you can do L2 off-chain. Each comes with its own pros and cons. Big blocks are easier to implement and simpler to set up, but they'll require future hard forks. Off-chain scaling is more flexible but they are a lot more complicated. Big block retains decentralization feature. Off-chain scaling will require some centralization in layer 2 to bring the cost down. Both are fine scaling strategies. But the discussion becomes highly political. One side needs to win. And there's DeFi, decentralized finance. It's more like centralized finance dressed up in tech jargon. When you add more layers on top of the main chains, the complexity of the systems increase. To bring down the costs, you'll have to create centralized layer 2 systems.