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> 4. By design, distributed consensus protocols diffuse responsibility for a function among several difficult-to-identify parties. While this may be an effectiv

by ahnick 4y ago

> 4. By design, distributed consensus protocols diffuse responsibility for a function among several difficult-to-identify parties. While this may be an effective way to prevent some kinds of centralization, it also means that making someone accountable for how the function is performed is difficult, and often impossible. While the protocol might use cryptographic techniques to assure correct operation, they may not capture all requirements, and may not be correctly used by the protocol designers. Ummm, what? If something is decentralized, then that's kind of the point that you can't hold "someone accountable for how the function is performed". If you could hold someone accountable, then you would be able to censor the function at that point of control. This just seems like a criticism of decentralization as a whole. Also, at the beginning of the Decentralization Techniques section they said... > "Choosing the appropriate techniques for decentralization requires balancing the specific goals of the function against centralization risk, because completely precluding all forms of centralization through technical means is rarely achievable." So is it that decentralization is impossible to achieve or that it's achievable, but undesirable? I feel like I'm being gaslighted by the IETF.

gsnedders 4y ago
Not all parties are necessarily equal: if you have a distributed system, but 90% of the nodes are controlled by Google (or Meta, or Amazon, etc.) do you actually have a distributed system? It can be important to know who controls the nodes in a distributed system, and this can often be opaque or designed to be undiscoverable. This is the concern in those places. Merely knowing who controls the nodes doesn’t mean you actually can trivially censor them: if you have thousands of nodes controlled by different organisations globally you’ll have a much harder time censoring them than a distributed system where a single organisation has a significant share.
- ahnick 4y ago
  If 90% of the nodes are controlled by Google, then I think the answer is clear that you do NOT in fact have a distributed system. If this occurs, then the system was not designed well and should be abandoned for a new one. Agreed, you want the nodes to be controlled by many different entities globally, but that should be a function of the technical implementation of the distributed system rather than having to identify a responsible party that is accountable for this objective. Privacy is crucial to ensure a distributed system continues to function; otherwise, orgs or individuals running nodes could be censored in mass by authorities or participants may stop using the system due to security concerns.
excuses_ 4y ago
> So is it that decentralization is impossible to achieve or that it's achievable, but undesirable? I feel like I'm being gaslighted by the IETF. While reading this, I tried to apply what they mention at the beginning of the Centralization and Decentralization sections, that is that both are continuums. They try to quantify this using "centralization risk". For some functions, greater decentralization might be not worth the effort, is actually undesirable, or even impossible due to technical reasons. For others, these are in greater number, everything should be done to prevent centralization.

by ahnick 4y ago

gsnedders 4y ago

Not all parties are necessarily equal: if you have a distributed system, but 90% of the nodes are controlled by Google (or Meta, or Amazon, etc.) do you actually have a distributed system? It can be important to know who controls the nodes in a distributed system, and this can often be opaque or designed to be undiscoverable. This is the concern in those places. Merely knowing who controls the nodes doesn’t mean you actually can trivially censor them: if you have thousands of nodes controlled by different organisations globally you’ll have a much harder time censoring them than a distributed system where a single organisation has a significant share.

ahnick 4y ago
If 90% of the nodes are controlled by Google, then I think the answer is clear that you do NOT in fact have a distributed system. If this occurs, then the system was not designed well and should be abandoned for a new one. Agreed, you want the nodes to be controlled by many different entities globally, but that should be a function of the technical implementation of the distributed system rather than having to identify a responsible party that is accountable for this objective. Privacy is crucial to ensure a distributed system continues to function; otherwise, orgs or individuals running nodes could be censored in mass by authorities or participants may stop using the system due to security concerns.

excuses_ 4y ago

> So is it that decentralization is impossible to achieve or that it's achievable, but undesirable? I feel like I'm being gaslighted by the IETF. While reading this, I tried to apply what they mention at the beginning of the Centralization and Decentralization sections, that is that both are continuums. They try to quantify this using "centralization risk". For some functions, greater decentralization might be not worth the effort, is actually undesirable, or even impossible due to technical reasons. For others, these are in greater number, everything should be done to prevent centralization.