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For all intents and purposes, E-Mail (assuming you are in control of your own domain name) and Bitcoin are equally decentralized. E-Mail uses DNS information t

• kaoD 12y ago
  > For all intents and purposes, E-Mail (assuming you are in control of your own domain name) and Bitcoin are equally decentralized. I completely disagree. If your system isn't fully peer-to-peer, it's not decentralized. Period. The central servers might federate with each other, but it's still not decentralized since you're still relying on central third parties. Even if you set up your own server, the recipient's server is still a third party you have to rely on. > Bitcoin uses DNS seeds to bootstrap new peers. You focus too much on DNS (which I purposely skimmed over in your parent comment, just a single sentence) while I'm talking about the system itself. In the first place, Bitcoin relies on DNS much less than email: it's easier to replace DNS for Bitcoin (e.g. using list of known seeds, as you said) and it's something you do once (when connecting to the network for the first time), while email relies entirely on DNS for normal operation. - If you want to send email to a new unknown domain, you must fetch it's mail server from DNS if you don't know its IP already. And you still have to rely on the destination server proper operation! - If you want to send some BTC to a new Bitcoin address, you're good to go as long as you're already connected to the network. Let's level it: even if you avoid using DNSs both on email and Bitcoin, Bitcoin is still way more decentralized (since it's peer-to-peer) compared to email (which is peer-to-server-to-server-to-peer). If there's a server inbetween, it's not decentralized. Also: Bitcoin addresses are not tied to single providers, while email addresses are. > Bitcoin miners may choose not to include messages in the block chain. But because it is a decentralized protocol, someone else may choose to include it. That's the magic! If a single peer refuses to do something, there are still thousands of peers which might not refuse! In email, you rely on two authoritative servers, the sender and the recipient. If any of those two fail, communication is interrupted. Even you can include the transaction (with enough horsepower) or offer some compelling reason for others to include it, such as a huge fee. In email, if the server you rely on refuses to do something (think of a judicial order)... you can't do anything about it other than changing providers, updating your addresses, sharing your address with your recipient (which you might not be able to), etc. > Once the destination host is known, E-Mail can transport messages directly through SMTP. Bitcoin can broadcast to any nodes, including the desired recipient. Exactly! Quoting you: Bitcoin can broadcast to any nodes! Even if the recipient isn't even connected, the system keeps working! That's what makes Bitcoin more decentralized than email. I'll quote you again: Bitcoin can broadcast to any nodes! > And it avoids the problem of having to rely on unreliable peers and picky miners. So you'd rather rely on a few unreliable and picky servers which might be subject to coercion, instead of a lot of unreliable and picky peers which are easily repleaceable without damage or any burden to the system or its users? The key here is a few vs. a lot, and replaceability of nodes without burden for the users.
  • knz42 12y ago
    Technically SMTP can be decentralized in the way you describe. Anyone can run a MTA. In principle a MTA should try routing messages through alternate routes to the destination if the first route does not work; also messages are stored on the way if some routes are blocked. The fact people do not currently use SMTP in a fully distributed fashion does not detract from the fact that e-mail can be (re-)made fully distributed if/when need be.
    • kaoD 12y ago
      Kind of, and I acknowledge it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8102128 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8102128 But even then it wouldn't be decentralized. Everyone would have his own single point of failure, but it's still centralized (as I explain there) because SMTP is designed to rely on centralized services (DNS, which you can't practically avoid) and assumes servers which are single points of failure (even if there are millions of them, you can still be cut off from yours). A government can disrupt email communications even if everyone has its own server because SMTP assumes single central points of delivery by design. > if the first route does not work Bitmessage does it even if the first route works. Which is exactly what makes email centralized, and Bitmessage not. Imagine a malicious MTA saying "ok, got the message" but not relaying it. The email is gone forever and you wont even notice. In Bitmessage the message will reach its destination one way or another... by design! If you have to hack email to be more like Bitmessage for it to be decentralized... what's exactly your point? :P