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For one, the author pointed out that Opensea NFTs are stored on the Google Cloud Platform, one of those trillion dollar monopolies. Proof of stake means the la

For one, the author pointed out that Opensea NFTs are stored on the Google Cloud Platform, one of those trillion dollar monopolies. Proof of stake means the largest stakeholders can unilaterally reject transactions. Technically the chain could fork. Practically, convincing everyone to move to a new chain seems about as difficult as everyone moving off Facebook because a few people get banned. Proof of work means the richest people can afford more miners and completely control the chain. So where is the decentralization? The only realistic decentralization I can make out is that its possible to build alternative chains, but that very thing is possible today. Its possible to build an alternate payment processor or social network if Visa bans your business, the really hard part is building it and getting the entire ecosystem to actually use it.

chrisco255 5y ago
Opensea uses Google as a caching layer. NFTs on OpenSea can either be created by going through their centralized, counterfactual layer (which doesn't cost gas until someone purchases) or by deploying your own ERC721 smart contract to Ethereum or Polygon and hosting the content however you like. If you follow the ERC721 standard, you can take that NFT to any web store. It is not limited to OpenSea, even if that happens to be the most popular at this time. > Proof of stake means the largest stakeholders can unilaterally reject transactions. Technically the chain could fork. Practically, convincing everyone to move to a new chain seems about as difficult as everyone moving off Facebook because a few people get banned. > Proof of work means the richest people can afford more miners and completely control the chain. > So where is the decentralization? The only realistic decentralization I can make out is that its possible to build alternative chains, but that very thing is possible today. Its possible to build an alternate payment processor or social network if Visa bans your business, the really hard part is building it and getting the entire ecosystem to actually use it. On a POW system such as Bitcoin or ETH1, you'd need 51% or more of the hash power on the network, which is more than a hundred Google datacenters worth of hashpower, and you'd have to spend a vast amount of energy in order to execute the attack, and at the end of it all, the community would mount a fork and initiate a change that left your attack out of history. It is quite difficult to coordinate a vast amount of people to fork a major chain and have that fork be recognized as the New Bitcoin or the New Ethereum. That is where the decentralization comes in and where the guarantees of execution comes in. Blockchains are protected by cryptography and economics (game theory) as well as social consensus. From V. Buterin: "Theoretically, a majority collusion of validators may take over a proof of stake chain, and start acting maliciously. However, (i) through clever protocol design, their ability to earn extra profits through such manipulation can be limited as much as possible, and more importantly (ii) if they try to prevent new validators from joining, or execute 51% attacks, then the community can simply coordinate a hard fork and delete the offending validators’ deposits. A successful attack may cost $50 million, but the process of cleaning up the consequences will not be that much more onerous than the geth/parity consensus failure of 2016.11.25. Two days later, the blockchain and community are back on track, attackers are $50 million poorer, and the rest of the community is likely richer since the attack will have caused the value of the token to go up due to the ensuing supply crunch. That’s attack/defense asymmetry for you. [1]" [1] https://medium.com/@VitalikButerin/a-proof-of-stake-design-philosophy-506585978d51 https://medium.com/@VitalikButerin/a-proof-of-stake-design-p...
MrPatan 5y ago
> Opensea NFTs are stored on the Google Cloud Platform Other NFTs are fully on-chain, buy those. This is such a weird argument to make.

chrisco255 5y ago

Opensea uses Google as a caching layer. NFTs on OpenSea can either be created by going through their centralized, counterfactual layer (which doesn't cost gas until someone purchases) or by deploying your own ERC721 smart contract to Ethereum or Polygon and hosting the content however you like. If you follow the ERC721 standard, you can take that NFT to any web store. It is not limited to OpenSea, even if that happens to be the most popular at this time. > Proof of stake means the largest stakeholders can unilaterally reject transactions. Technically the chain could fork. Practically, convincing everyone to move to a new chain seems about as difficult as everyone moving off Facebook because a few people get banned. > Proof of work means the richest people can afford more miners and completely control the chain. > So where is the decentralization? The only realistic decentralization I can make out is that its possible to build alternative chains, but that very thing is possible today. Its possible to build an alternate payment processor or social network if Visa bans your business, the really hard part is building it and getting the entire ecosystem to actually use it. On a POW system such as Bitcoin or ETH1, you'd need 51% or more of the hash power on the network, which is more than a hundred Google datacenters worth of hashpower, and you'd have to spend a vast amount of energy in order to execute the attack, and at the end of it all, the community would mount a fork and initiate a change that left your attack out of history. It is quite difficult to coordinate a vast amount of people to fork a major chain and have that fork be recognized as the New Bitcoin or the New Ethereum. That is where the decentralization comes in and where the guarantees of execution comes in. Blockchains are protected by cryptography and economics (game theory) as well as social consensus. From V. Buterin: "Theoretically, a majority collusion of validators may take over a proof of stake chain, and start acting maliciously. However, (i) through clever protocol design, their ability to earn extra profits through such manipulation can be limited as much as possible, and more importantly (ii) if they try to prevent new validators from joining, or execute 51% attacks, then the community can simply coordinate a hard fork and delete the offending validators’ deposits. A successful attack may cost $50 million, but the process of cleaning up the consequences will not be that much more onerous than the geth/parity consensus failure of 2016.11.25. Two days later, the blockchain and community are back on track, attackers are $50 million poorer, and the rest of the community is likely richer since the attack will have caused the value of the token to go up due to the ensuing supply crunch. That’s attack/defense asymmetry for you. [1]" [1] https://medium.com/@VitalikButerin/a-proof-of-stake-design-philosophy-506585978d51 https://medium.com/@VitalikButerin/a-proof-of-stake-design-p...

MrPatan 5y ago

> Opensea NFTs are stored on the Google Cloud Platform Other NFTs are fully on-chain, buy those. This is such a weird argument to make.