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Governments started the offensive. Now decentralization actually starts to matter. Ethereum is switching to PoS at the last minute, PoW miners are very easily

Governments started the offensive. Now decentralization actually starts to matter. Ethereum is switching to PoS at the last minute, PoW miners are very easily forced to enforce sanctions because they can't hide due to enormous physical and legal presence. Home stakers can easily hide and break the law.

dannyw 4y ago
Decentralization really is starting to matter. It's a wake up call for a lot of developers in this space, that pragmatic shortcuts (e.g. centralized RPCs, centralized stablecoins like USDC) have disadvantages that may no longer outweigh the advantages.
- diogenes1 4y ago
  true. none of smart contract blockchains today are actually a practical tool till lightclients that run on smartphones are mainstream
  - codehalo 4y ago
    The problem is that Apple and Google have a kill switch.
    - yokem55 4y ago
      The light clients that the parent envisions could potentially run entirely in javascript within a browser. No app store needed unless the browser engines start blacklisting bits of js.
      - boppo1 4y ago
        Doesn't that leave them WIDE open to malicious code?
  - nootropicat 4y ago
    I don't think they are going to ever be mainstream. Even a lightnode that only downloads headers is going to eat up battery fast. If a centralized service works for you, what's the point? What's necessary is to allow actually persecuted people to run nodes on their computers.
    - flarex 4y ago
      Modern light clients don't use that much battery and are optimised for mobile usage. They even have very short start times making use of snapshotting and back filling headers i.e. you ask all nodes on the network that latest snapshot header close to the head and start from there working back towards genesis. This can be even faster than using an RPC and is far more decentralised.
  - flarex 4y ago
    Some ecosystems have made significant progress on in browser and mobile light clients. For example: https://github.com/paritytech/substrate-connect/ https://github.com/paritytech/substrate-connect/

dannyw 4y ago

Decentralization really is starting to matter. It's a wake up call for a lot of developers in this space, that pragmatic shortcuts (e.g. centralized RPCs, centralized stablecoins like USDC) have disadvantages that may no longer outweigh the advantages.

diogenes1 4y ago
true. none of smart contract blockchains today are actually a practical tool till lightclients that run on smartphones are mainstream
- codehalo 4y ago
  The problem is that Apple and Google have a kill switch.
  - yokem55 4y ago
    The light clients that the parent envisions could potentially run entirely in javascript within a browser. No app store needed unless the browser engines start blacklisting bits of js.
    - boppo1 4y ago
      Doesn't that leave them WIDE open to malicious code?
- nootropicat 4y ago
  I don't think they are going to ever be mainstream. Even a lightnode that only downloads headers is going to eat up battery fast. If a centralized service works for you, what's the point? What's necessary is to allow actually persecuted people to run nodes on their computers.
  - flarex 4y ago
    Modern light clients don't use that much battery and are optimised for mobile usage. They even have very short start times making use of snapshotting and back filling headers i.e. you ask all nodes on the network that latest snapshot header close to the head and start from there working back towards genesis. This can be even faster than using an RPC and is far more decentralised.
- flarex 4y ago
  Some ecosystems have made significant progress on in browser and mobile light clients. For example: https://github.com/paritytech/substrate-connect/ https://github.com/paritytech/substrate-connect/