> Decentralization is super hard to achieve in anything other than a toy universe. "Proof of humanity" in theory is cool, but humans can be bought. Power will a

> Decentralization is super hard to achieve in anything other than a toy universe. "Proof of humanity" in theory is cool, but humans can be bought. Power will always tend to centralization when money exists. It's obvious when the decentralization key is computing power, as money buys more computers and results in centralized control. Even if unique brain patterns becomes the decentralization key, nothing stops two unique people from colluding and voting in the same direction. Nothing stops one person from purchasing the voting power of another person. > I think Vitalik even said once that the only reason for small fish to buy governance tokens is in expectation of the price going up, and hoping they can be sold later to a larger fish, where the actual network is governed by a few. I don't see how "proof of humanity" is any different than this, since nothing stops collusion or other vectors for "vote buying". Centralization infects the very roots of decentralization. This is not an easy problem, and Bitcoin doesn't solve it, and no token out there currently solves it. There might not be any solution in the real world, where humans can communicate freely. ---------- > Decentralization is super hard to achieve in anything other than a toy universe. > Power will always tend to centralization when money exists. > It's obvious when the decentralization key is computing power, as money buys more computers and results in centralized control. > Nothing stops one person from purchasing the voting power of another person. > Centralization infects the very roots of decentralization. > This is not an easy problem, and Bitcoin doesn't solve it, and no token out there currently solves it. > There might not be any solution in the real world, where humans can communicate freely. The parent comment is likely right, but it's engaging in a "it's not 100% perfect, so it's useless" fallacy: Just because we can't get 100% of the way there doesn't mean that the effort shouldn't be done in the first place. The Bittorrent protocol is a good example of this, as the protocol's not perfect either, relying on centralized trackers for fast peering. Still, that didn't mean that the protocol couldn't improve, with Mainline DHT eventually being developed for the protocol. Even though it's still slower than a centralized tracker, it does its assigned job well & to great success. Were such a viewpoint to be transplanted towards the Bittorrent protocol before DHT's creation, the parent would've likely viewed trackers to be "un-decentralizable" & therefore a waste of time. Attempts at decentralizing trackers would've been seen as a futile effort, as "they'll never be as efficient as centralized trackers". In general, no working system is ever 100% perfect, so why is such an attitude still being projected upon all open-source projects? It's likely that 100% decentralization will never be achieved, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't aim for at least 50%. The alternative is a nihilistic "we'll always need centralization" dystopia, & that fundamentally doesn't sit well with me all.