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No, not all cryptocurrencies are decentralized. There's nothing about a blockchain that requires decentralization. It's a key tenet of some of the coins, but

No, not all cryptocurrencies are decentralized. There's nothing about a blockchain that requires decentralization. It's a key tenet of some of the coins, but not all.

Retric 3y ago
There’s no point to the crypto part of cryptocurrencies if it’s centralized. You just have a currency.
- nightski 3y ago
  I'm not sure I follow. Having an immutable system of record (verified by crypto) is of value without decentralization and the blockchain is one realization of that.
  - Retric 3y ago
    There’s nothing immutable about a private blockchain. Suppose Company X buys 100k in hashing power and signs everything accordingly so it all looks fine. How do you know they didn’t instead buy 200k and run two blockchains side by side until they need to pick one months later? Alternatively, they instead buy 1M in hashing power so they can spend 1 day making a believable 10 days worth of history on 100k hashing power blockchain. Now you can argue publishing a blockchain makes it immutable, but so does publishing anything else. Don’t want people to see the data? Publish hashes of your database backups.
    - seanhunter 3y ago
      THat's not how private blockchains work at all. IF you have a private blockchain (usually called an "app chain") people don't "buy hashing power" on it. The entity running the network has 100% of the validators on the network. "Hashing power" doesn't apply because it's not bicoin so would be POS, but the equivalent is owning the validators, which if it's an app chain there isn't (ever afaik) a process by which some other org can buy the ability to run a validator. The controlling entity just decides that.
      - Retric 3y ago
        I was doing the mathematics thing of skipping over the most trivial case. Set N = 0 dollars of hash power and it becomes really obvious that the person running the network can just arbitrarily create any blockchain they want at any time for ~zero cost. It therefore clearly isn’t an “immutable system of record” because they can change it. But let’s flip it around what specific benefit are you proposing and how exactly does cryptography enable it differently than a Bank.
        junofan 3y ago
        You can checkpoint the canonical fork on a public PoW chain like Bitcoin every so often. Banks carry insurance.
        Retric 3y ago
        What’s your argument for >>centralized<< blockchains here? Bitcoin and other public PoW blockchains are decentralized. > Banks carry insurance. And???
        seanhunter 3y ago
        Firstly I don't disagree that private chains are generally pointless, so I'm not going to post these supposed specific benefits. I was saying your "hash power" based thought experiment is not valid. Also the "most trivial case" you're proposing here is a strawman. You demonstrate that your trivial case wouldn't work and everyone who does this knows that it wouldn't work so that's not how it works. Genarally these chains submit a transaction proof to some base chain so they can't go back later and rewrite history unless they could also rewrite history on that base chain. Here's a source if you want to read up about how these things actually work https://wiki.polygon.technology/docs/cdk/ https://wiki.polygon.technology/docs/cdk/
        Retric 3y ago
        I am not disagreeing that in the wider context it comes off as a strawman. Which is why I was asking for specific benefits. However, I was specifically responded to someone who seems to think blockchain = immutable system of record and I was pointing out that private blockchains don’t provide that because the mechanism public PoW chains uses to get immutability isn’t applicable. I realize there are a lot more than just 1 way people are proposing private blockchains and most of them involve publishing something, but as long as we can agree the blockchain bit is pointless then discussing them is a waste of time.
    - nightski 3y ago
      You just pointed it out yourself. You can't really modify historical data on a blockchain. So instead you'd need to create separate blockchains with separate histories. That's the value. If you have a centralized but public blockchain you can't really go and swap it out or everyone is going to know.
      - Retric 3y ago
        > You can't really modify historical data on a blockchain. On a private chain you can easily change the data. Remove the hashing fig leaf and it’s even easier. On a public one it’s the public nature that prevents changes after publication. So no, being a blockchain doesn’t prevent changes whatsoever. Having a public ledger does.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - pornel 3y ago
    FTX was supposed to be cryptocurrency-based — you were buying tokens in an immutable blockchain, and yet the real money was tracked in spreadsheets, and the exchange had an infinite money flag for their own accounts.
- pornel 3y ago
  Don’t tell that to people buying Tether.

No, not all cryptocurrencies are decentralized. There's nothing about a blockchain that requires decentralization. It's a key tenet of some of the coins, but not all.

Retric 3y ago

There’s no point to the crypto part of cryptocurrencies if it’s centralized. You just have a currency.

nightski 3y ago
I'm not sure I follow. Having an immutable system of record (verified by crypto) is of value without decentralization and the blockchain is one realization of that.
- Retric 3y ago
  There’s nothing immutable about a private blockchain. Suppose Company X buys 100k in hashing power and signs everything accordingly so it all looks fine. How do you know they didn’t instead buy 200k and run two blockchains side by side until they need to pick one months later? Alternatively, they instead buy 1M in hashing power so they can spend 1 day making a believable 10 days worth of history on 100k hashing power blockchain. Now you can argue publishing a blockchain makes it immutable, but so does publishing anything else. Don’t want people to see the data? Publish hashes of your database backups.
  - seanhunter 3y ago
    THat's not how private blockchains work at all. IF you have a private blockchain (usually called an "app chain") people don't "buy hashing power" on it. The entity running the network has 100% of the validators on the network. "Hashing power" doesn't apply because it's not bicoin so would be POS, but the equivalent is owning the validators, which if it's an app chain there isn't (ever afaik) a process by which some other org can buy the ability to run a validator. The controlling entity just decides that.
    - Retric 3y ago
      I was doing the mathematics thing of skipping over the most trivial case. Set N = 0 dollars of hash power and it becomes really obvious that the person running the network can just arbitrarily create any blockchain they want at any time for ~zero cost. It therefore clearly isn’t an “immutable system of record” because they can change it. But let’s flip it around what specific benefit are you proposing and how exactly does cryptography enable it differently than a Bank.
      - junofan 3y ago
        You can checkpoint the canonical fork on a public PoW chain like Bitcoin every so often. Banks carry insurance.
        Retric 3y ago
        What’s your argument for >>centralized<< blockchains here? Bitcoin and other public PoW blockchains are decentralized. > Banks carry insurance. And???
      - seanhunter 3y ago
        Firstly I don't disagree that private chains are generally pointless, so I'm not going to post these supposed specific benefits. I was saying your "hash power" based thought experiment is not valid. Also the "most trivial case" you're proposing here is a strawman. You demonstrate that your trivial case wouldn't work and everyone who does this knows that it wouldn't work so that's not how it works. Genarally these chains submit a transaction proof to some base chain so they can't go back later and rewrite history unless they could also rewrite history on that base chain. Here's a source if you want to read up about how these things actually work https://wiki.polygon.technology/docs/cdk/ https://wiki.polygon.technology/docs/cdk/
        Retric 3y ago
        I am not disagreeing that in the wider context it comes off as a strawman. Which is why I was asking for specific benefits. However, I was specifically responded to someone who seems to think blockchain = immutable system of record and I was pointing out that private blockchains don’t provide that because the mechanism public PoW chains uses to get immutability isn’t applicable. I realize there are a lot more than just 1 way people are proposing private blockchains and most of them involve publishing something, but as long as we can agree the blockchain bit is pointless then discussing them is a waste of time.
  - nightski 3y ago
    You just pointed it out yourself. You can't really modify historical data on a blockchain. So instead you'd need to create separate blockchains with separate histories. That's the value. If you have a centralized but public blockchain you can't really go and swap it out or everyone is going to know.
    - Retric 3y ago
      > You can't really modify historical data on a blockchain. On a private chain you can easily change the data. Remove the hashing fig leaf and it’s even easier. On a public one it’s the public nature that prevents changes after publication. So no, being a blockchain doesn’t prevent changes whatsoever. Having a public ledger does.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- pornel 3y ago
  FTX was supposed to be cryptocurrency-based — you were buying tokens in an immutable blockchain, and yet the real money was tracked in spreadsheets, and the exchange had an infinite money flag for their own accounts.
pornel 3y ago
Don’t tell that to people buying Tether.