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The fact that BitTorrent has worked for decades without centralizing, and likely never will centralize, stands in quiet opposition to the entire "centralization

The fact that BitTorrent has worked for decades without centralizing, and likely never will centralize, stands in quiet opposition to the entire "centralization is inevitable" line of thinking. The trackers, the obvious centralizing force, have always remained content-focused, rather than making the transition to platform control. Trackers are roughly federated, as you note; there are a lot of nodes, but relatively few trackers. And I believe most blockchain style systems would shake out similarly. The authentic dev communities building blockchain tech are throwing their weight behind the idea that they will in time transition towards technical solutions, having already set a course for the social solution. So from their end, this criticism is always technical in nature. The initial source of trust is going to be in mathematical realities guaranteeing certain outcomes: if not cryptography, then tokenomics. Of course there are a huge number of "P.T. Barnums" who have jumped ahead to create solutions today, and these solutions tend to platformize. That's the discontinuity making it a circus.

giantrobot 5y ago
> The fact that BitTorrent has worked for decades without centralizing, and likely never will centralize, stands in quiet opposition to the entire "centralization is inevitable" line of thinking. Except for all the centralized points you'd be correct. BitTorrent requires bootstrap nodes. While these can be specified in a torrent file but many clients have some hard coded values for bootstrap nodes. If bootstrap nodes are unavailable and a torrent doesn't contain new values a BitTorrent client can't do much. Then there's finding content which doesn't just magically happen. Torrent search engines exist because BT doesn't have a built in search system like other P2P networks. Finally there's the central locations where clients are developed and distributed. BT clients don't just manifest on people's computers. They don't magically update themselves. Cryptobros talk of decentralization as if shit just exists in a luminiferous ether. You just wish hard enough and things manifest on your system from it. Centralization doesn't automatically mean Facebook controls everything. Stuff comes together at locii and those are by nature central in a network. They can be disrupted, blocked, or just disappear and then the network falls apart.

giantrobot 5y ago

> The fact that BitTorrent has worked for decades without centralizing, and likely never will centralize, stands in quiet opposition to the entire "centralization is inevitable" line of thinking. Except for all the centralized points you'd be correct. BitTorrent requires bootstrap nodes. While these can be specified in a torrent file but many clients have some hard coded values for bootstrap nodes. If bootstrap nodes are unavailable and a torrent doesn't contain new values a BitTorrent client can't do much. Then there's finding content which doesn't just magically happen. Torrent search engines exist because BT doesn't have a built in search system like other P2P networks. Finally there's the central locations where clients are developed and distributed. BT clients don't just manifest on people's computers. They don't magically update themselves. Cryptobros talk of decentralization as if shit just exists in a luminiferous ether. You just wish hard enough and things manifest on your system from it. Centralization doesn't automatically mean Facebook controls everything. Stuff comes together at locii and those are by nature central in a network. They can be disrupted, blocked, or just disappear and then the network falls apart.