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> (...) is that centralization is a feature, not a bug. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't centralization in blockchain-related applications a critical

by fivea 5y ago

> (...) is that centralization is a feature, not a bug. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't centralization in blockchain-related applications a critical problem which defeats the whole purpose of said tech? I mean, if a Blockchain is controlled by a single entity, doesn't that entity have all it needs to rewrite it however they wish? And also, is there any difference between storing a record in a centrally-managed Blockchain or a record in plain old relational database managed by a third party?

bambax 5y ago
This is all discussed in the original article ("My first impressions of Web3"). The post here is a response to the article. My comment says that the response may have missed the point made in the article.
- fivea 5y ago
  > This is all discussed in the original article I read both posts, and I still have this question. Is it possible to provide a clear and simple explanation? Is there any answer at all which is not the expected "you're right, centralized crypto is pointless at best and a scam at worse"? Otherwise this sort of reply feels like a blatant attempt to dismiss a concern through hand-waving for which there is no good answer without addressing any of it's points.
  - dmcgee 5y ago
    Is a blockchain strictly necessary for decentralization at all? If the issue with decentralization is control and governance rather than technology, why not have a cooperative model that still functions on a centralized database?
    - DarylZero 5y ago
      The cooperative model requires people to coordinate on choosing the same human authority figure. Blockchain only requires people to coordinate on choosing the same programmatic criteria for block validity (and then choosing the longest valid chain).
      - bombcar 5y ago
        Which practically ends up the same - see the Etherium fork/rollback. One potential use maybe would be a blockchain that is openly run by a company (80+% of nodes or something) but if you also run a note it could continue after the company ceases to be. There are other ways to do that but it might almost be a reasonable use case.
        DarylZero 5y ago
        You can point to that event but it's actually not enough to establish that it "practically ends up the same."
        stransky 5y ago
        You can ignore the event, but the trust we’re to put in the blockchain is based on a promise that such an event can’t happen, but it did.
        DarylZero 5y ago
        Not really. The old chain even still exists. Also, Ethereum is different from a real blockchain.
    - rglullis 5y ago
      I'm guessing your question is rhetorical, but in case it isn't: Repeat after me: "blockchain is only required if you want to solve a problem that deals with permissionless, trustless and distributed consensus". - permissionless: no previous vetting/authentication/authorization of any participant. If you can a priori authenticate users, you can have a decentralized system with Paxos, and you can run a "decentralized" governance system based on simple "web of trust". - trustless: no participant is assumed to be reliable/honest - distributed: the network can suffer disconnections and partitions, but the overall system can still work. If you can choose who will be allowed to define "consensus", you can use other BFT consensus solutions, so no blockchain is needed. If you have a "cooperative" model, this assumes that you can trust the participants, so no blockchain is needed. If your system can withstand network disconnections/partitions, no blockchain is needed.
      - jhgb 5y ago
        > - trustless: no participant is assumed to be reliable/honest Shouldn't that be "at least one participant is assumed to be unreliable/dishonest"?
        oblio 5y ago
        They're equivalent. If at least 1 participant is unreliable/dishonest and I don't know which one, the only logical reaction is to treat them all the same until I can determine the culpable one.
        anonymouse008 5y ago
        Perhaps, but it feels a bit like the Monty Hall paradox/game. If you know which ones are more truthful, then the odds aren't as bad as "everyone must be guilty until proven innocent." "Innocent until proven guilty," the modus operandi of the US judicial system, at least in theory, is the design of a system that assumes trust and removes offenders.
        rglullis 5y ago
  - armchairhacker 5y ago
    The original article by Moxie explains this. My understanding is, some centralization doesn’t defeat the purpose of the blockchain. e.g. if a centralized server stores and modifies the blockchain but it’s public, then clients can verify the blockchain, and fork it if they don’t agree with the server. But too much centralization, which seems to be the case now, basically does defeat the purpose. Because if everyone is using the same client and server or if people are interacting with these services insecurely exposing their wallets and data, then these companies could switch their backend to not use a blockchain or just steal coins. Most people probably wouldn’t even notice, and even if they did there’s nothing they could do.
    - eternalban 5y ago
      No, Moxie correctly pointed out that the trust model and physical infrastructure are distinct architectural elements, and, it is good/ok to have decentralized for the former but centralized for the latter. The reason why was the long preamble about evolution of platforms vs protocols, and user preference for 3rd party managed convenience. -- ps So the question is whether it is possible to have effective solutions in that design space. Email in fact fits these design parameters: end users can use PGP and PKI to have private and authenticated communication, but as Moxie knows far better than me, it hasn't happened because now we have shifted the burden of running 'something' back to the end user again, who is now responsible for participating in a 'decentralized trust' system. It appears the problem is reducible to (and thus is fundamentally about) identity and associated attributes of an identity. So what we really need is a decentralized identity infrastructure with 'last mile' interfaces to your physical political jurisdiction for those who want "legal" attribution for fully decentralized interactions (possibly built on centralized infrastructure). All other "Web3" systems can be built on top of these.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - politician 5y ago
        I agree that we need decentralized identity infrastructure similar to sovrin.org, but what we’re going to get is “Login with Facebook” and “Login with Apple ID”.
  - resonious 5y ago
    If by "centralized crypto" we mean "everyone using OpenSea" (or similar custodian services) then the point is that OpenSea doesn't have full control over the data. I can build a competitor to OpenSea that has access to everyone's NFT ownership data because it's in a public blockchain. If Twitter decides to shut down their service, it's gone.
    - richardwhiuk 5y ago
      Then how did OpenSea remove the NFT from Moxie's wallet?
      - outside1234 5y ago
        They stopped hosting the URL that the blockchain pointed to
        jakear 5y ago
        This isn’t correct. Moxie hosts the image, OpenSea hosts the endpoint the wallet queries for ownership listing. The whole system is glorified CRUD, OpenSea always has full control.
      - TigeriusKirk 5y ago
        His particular wallet pointed to OpenSea by default for his NFTs. There are other wallets that do not, and the NFT never left Moxie's address.
pmontra 5y ago
The point seems to be: the blockchain is distributed but if everybody access to it through only a handful of nodes (because they don't want to host their own ones) then it could be centralized and nobody would notice the difference. If there is only one node acting as gateway to the blockchain then it could use PostgreSQL and there would be no differences in trust.
- ludamad 5y ago
  Are there SQL servers intended for direct public usage? EDIT: I do understand the ubiquity of SQL servers :) I'm asking about ones that expose a good chunk of SQL to end users, since theoretically one could build on that
  - magicalist 5y ago
    REST APIs usually have a database behind them, yes.
    - ludamad 5y ago
      That's not what I meant, I meant 'direct' as in permissioned by end users
      - thrashh 5y ago
        NFTs aren’t permissioned by end users. The person that deployed the smart contract still controls all permissions (although they can’t change it later — that is the only difference). The reason that you can trade a NFT is because the smart contract has an API written by the creator to allow it.
  - setr 5y ago
    What’s the point of this ask? A blockchain’s dataset isn’t arbitrarily editable by its users — there’s a very specific set of actions you can do, which are well defined, that modify the chain in a very structured manner… just as any API sitting in front of a database would do. Obviously you can modify your local copy of the chain as you wish, even corrupting the data, but if your chain isn’t accepted by the public, your changes don’t mean shit. So you’re really only able to (meaningfully) execute those public-allowed operations

by fivea 5y ago

bambax 5y ago

This is all discussed in the original article ("My first impressions of Web3"). The post here is a response to the article. My comment says that the response may have missed the point made in the article.

fivea 5y ago
> This is all discussed in the original article I read both posts, and I still have this question. Is it possible to provide a clear and simple explanation? Is there any answer at all which is not the expected "you're right, centralized crypto is pointless at best and a scam at worse"? Otherwise this sort of reply feels like a blatant attempt to dismiss a concern through hand-waving for which there is no good answer without addressing any of it's points.
- dmcgee 5y ago
  Is a blockchain strictly necessary for decentralization at all? If the issue with decentralization is control and governance rather than technology, why not have a cooperative model that still functions on a centralized database?
  - DarylZero 5y ago
    The cooperative model requires people to coordinate on choosing the same human authority figure. Blockchain only requires people to coordinate on choosing the same programmatic criteria for block validity (and then choosing the longest valid chain).
    - bombcar 5y ago
      Which practically ends up the same - see the Etherium fork/rollback. One potential use maybe would be a blockchain that is openly run by a company (80+% of nodes or something) but if you also run a note it could continue after the company ceases to be. There are other ways to do that but it might almost be a reasonable use case.
      - DarylZero 5y ago
        You can point to that event but it's actually not enough to establish that it "practically ends up the same."
        stransky 5y ago
        You can ignore the event, but the trust we’re to put in the blockchain is based on a promise that such an event can’t happen, but it did.
        DarylZero 5y ago
        Not really. The old chain even still exists. Also, Ethereum is different from a real blockchain.
  - rglullis 5y ago
    I'm guessing your question is rhetorical, but in case it isn't: Repeat after me: "blockchain is only required if you want to solve a problem that deals with permissionless, trustless and distributed consensus". - permissionless: no previous vetting/authentication/authorization of any participant. If you can a priori authenticate users, you can have a decentralized system with Paxos, and you can run a "decentralized" governance system based on simple "web of trust". - trustless: no participant is assumed to be reliable/honest - distributed: the network can suffer disconnections and partitions, but the overall system can still work. If you can choose who will be allowed to define "consensus", you can use other BFT consensus solutions, so no blockchain is needed. If you have a "cooperative" model, this assumes that you can trust the participants, so no blockchain is needed. If your system can withstand network disconnections/partitions, no blockchain is needed.
    - jhgb 5y ago
      > - trustless: no participant is assumed to be reliable/honest Shouldn't that be "at least one participant is assumed to be unreliable/dishonest"?
      - oblio 5y ago
        They're equivalent. If at least 1 participant is unreliable/dishonest and I don't know which one, the only logical reaction is to treat them all the same until I can determine the culpable one.
        anonymouse008 5y ago
        Perhaps, but it feels a bit like the Monty Hall paradox/game. If you know which ones are more truthful, then the odds aren't as bad as "everyone must be guilty until proven innocent." "Innocent until proven guilty," the modus operandi of the US judicial system, at least in theory, is the design of a system that assumes trust and removes offenders.
        rglullis 5y ago
- armchairhacker 5y ago
  The original article by Moxie explains this. My understanding is, some centralization doesn’t defeat the purpose of the blockchain. e.g. if a centralized server stores and modifies the blockchain but it’s public, then clients can verify the blockchain, and fork it if they don’t agree with the server. But too much centralization, which seems to be the case now, basically does defeat the purpose. Because if everyone is using the same client and server or if people are interacting with these services insecurely exposing their wallets and data, then these companies could switch their backend to not use a blockchain or just steal coins. Most people probably wouldn’t even notice, and even if they did there’s nothing they could do.
  - eternalban 5y ago
    No, Moxie correctly pointed out that the trust model and physical infrastructure are distinct architectural elements, and, it is good/ok to have decentralized for the former but centralized for the latter. The reason why was the long preamble about evolution of platforms vs protocols, and user preference for 3rd party managed convenience. -- ps So the question is whether it is possible to have effective solutions in that design space. Email in fact fits these design parameters: end users can use PGP and PKI to have private and authenticated communication, but as Moxie knows far better than me, it hasn't happened because now we have shifted the burden of running 'something' back to the end user again, who is now responsible for participating in a 'decentralized trust' system. It appears the problem is reducible to (and thus is fundamentally about) identity and associated attributes of an identity. So what we really need is a decentralized identity infrastructure with 'last mile' interfaces to your physical political jurisdiction for those who want "legal" attribution for fully decentralized interactions (possibly built on centralized infrastructure). All other "Web3" systems can be built on top of these.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - politician 5y ago
      I agree that we need decentralized identity infrastructure similar to sovrin.org, but what we’re going to get is “Login with Facebook” and “Login with Apple ID”.
- resonious 5y ago
  If by "centralized crypto" we mean "everyone using OpenSea" (or similar custodian services) then the point is that OpenSea doesn't have full control over the data. I can build a competitor to OpenSea that has access to everyone's NFT ownership data because it's in a public blockchain. If Twitter decides to shut down their service, it's gone.
  - richardwhiuk 5y ago
    Then how did OpenSea remove the NFT from Moxie's wallet?
    - outside1234 5y ago
      They stopped hosting the URL that the blockchain pointed to
      - jakear 5y ago
        This isn’t correct. Moxie hosts the image, OpenSea hosts the endpoint the wallet queries for ownership listing. The whole system is glorified CRUD, OpenSea always has full control.
    - TigeriusKirk 5y ago
      His particular wallet pointed to OpenSea by default for his NFTs. There are other wallets that do not, and the NFT never left Moxie's address.

pmontra 5y ago

The point seems to be: the blockchain is distributed but if everybody access to it through only a handful of nodes (because they don't want to host their own ones) then it could be centralized and nobody would notice the difference. If there is only one node acting as gateway to the blockchain then it could use PostgreSQL and there would be no differences in trust.

ludamad 5y ago
Are there SQL servers intended for direct public usage? EDIT: I do understand the ubiquity of SQL servers :) I'm asking about ones that expose a good chunk of SQL to end users, since theoretically one could build on that
- magicalist 5y ago
  REST APIs usually have a database behind them, yes.
  - ludamad 5y ago
    That's not what I meant, I meant 'direct' as in permissioned by end users
    - thrashh 5y ago
      NFTs aren’t permissioned by end users. The person that deployed the smart contract still controls all permissions (although they can’t change it later — that is the only difference). The reason that you can trade a NFT is because the smart contract has an API written by the creator to allow it.
- setr 5y ago
  What’s the point of this ask? A blockchain’s dataset isn’t arbitrarily editable by its users — there’s a very specific set of actions you can do, which are well defined, that modify the chain in a very structured manner… just as any API sitting in front of a database would do. Obviously you can modify your local copy of the chain as you wish, even corrupting the data, but if your chain isn’t accepted by the public, your changes don’t mean shit. So you’re really only able to (meaningfully) execute those public-allowed operations