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I've heard Vitalik Buterin (Ethereum creator) make the distinction between logical, architectural, and governance decentralization. Crypto projects tend to achi

I've heard Vitalik Buterin (Ethereum creator) make the distinction between logical, architectural, and governance decentralization. Crypto projects tend to achieve the second, but not the first or third.[1] A blockchain tends to require centralized logic/code/data structures so that agents can communicate with the same protocol. Architectural means servers. As the OP mentions, this is really the only way in which blockchains are currently decentralized. Governance is about how the rules and decisions are made. I guess fairly linked to the logical/code layer. Also heavily centralized in the blockchain world. [1] https://youtu.be/LKbOPYnUlXs?t=369 https://youtu.be/LKbOPYnUlXs?t=369

jrm4 5y ago
And they never will the third. Never. Once again, this is thinking you can make humans act like robot computer code. You can't. So-called "smart contracts" (which are neither) will never helpfully substitute for humans doing dispute resolution by talking to each other.
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
> I've heard Vitalik Buterin (Ethereum creator) make the distinction between logical, architectural, and governance decentralization. Crypto projects tend to achieve the second, but not the first or third. This is even worse than it sounds. Crypto projects like DAOs actually make hidden centralization a breeze for well-funded adversaries. If someone has enough money, they can simply take over a DAO by buying enough tokens to swing the votes in the direction they want. Thanks to the way most blockchain solutions are implemented, they can even accumulate all of these tokens in ways that appear decentralized across many unique wallets that are nevertheless controlled by a central party. Big players can acquire centralized control of decentralized projects in ways that consumers and regulators wouldn't even be able to detect. Decentralized, tokenized ownership structures are definitely not "power to the people" structures. They are "power to the money" structures, where whoever can spend the most money is guaranteed to win and all of the participants have given up their ability to ever even know when it's happening.
- crypto_is_king 5y ago
  This is true, but at some point the community will figure out what's going on, and either leave to a more promising and uncompromised project, or find a way to limit the voting power of the attacker. You can see this happening now with the Curve Wars.
- cslarson 5y ago
  DAO just means decentralised organisation. Like token, also a very generic term, it can come in many forms. There is nothing inherent about a DAO that even includes tokens, let alone tokens that are fungible or even acquirable.

jrm4 5y ago

And they never will the third. Never. Once again, this is thinking you can make humans act like robot computer code. You can't. So-called "smart contracts" (which are neither) will never helpfully substitute for humans doing dispute resolution by talking to each other.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

> I've heard Vitalik Buterin (Ethereum creator) make the distinction between logical, architectural, and governance decentralization. Crypto projects tend to achieve the second, but not the first or third. This is even worse than it sounds. Crypto projects like DAOs actually make hidden centralization a breeze for well-funded adversaries. If someone has enough money, they can simply take over a DAO by buying enough tokens to swing the votes in the direction they want. Thanks to the way most blockchain solutions are implemented, they can even accumulate all of these tokens in ways that appear decentralized across many unique wallets that are nevertheless controlled by a central party. Big players can acquire centralized control of decentralized projects in ways that consumers and regulators wouldn't even be able to detect. Decentralized, tokenized ownership structures are definitely not "power to the people" structures. They are "power to the money" structures, where whoever can spend the most money is guaranteed to win and all of the participants have given up their ability to ever even know when it's happening.

crypto_is_king 5y ago
This is true, but at some point the community will figure out what's going on, and either leave to a more promising and uncompromised project, or find a way to limit the voting power of the attacker. You can see this happening now with the Curve Wars.
cslarson 5y ago
DAO just means decentralised organisation. Like token, also a very generic term, it can come in many forms. There is nothing inherent about a DAO that even includes tokens, let alone tokens that are fungible or even acquirable.