Lately, I've been thinking about the idea of decentralization in the blockchain. The idea of distributing governance to millions of machines worldwide. On paper, it looks like a perfect alternative to centralized currency with self-custody and immutability.
But if you look closer at it, decentralization is an impossible task. Think about it this way:
Mining rigs are distributed worldwide, meaning no central entity can fully govern the network without consequence. The ecosystem itself is distributed and so is the consensus. But at the end of the day, these mining rigs require a valid internet connection to communicate to each other. And the providers for their internet are corporations that most likely record your traffic. This essentially means that even decentralized machines are automatically centralized the second they connect to an ISP.
Additionally, it's nearly impossible to create your own wifi without either connecting to a pre-existing ISP's plan or a data center owned by that ISP.
This question has been bothering me, are we no longer able to enforce decentralization?
Posted by istekdev
2 Comments
If total isolation from existing infrastructure was the requirement for decentralization, then nothing on Earth qualifies. Bitcoin’s success lies in its ability to remain immutable despite those connections, not in the absence of them.
I mean overall decentralization is an impossible task. But I’m looking at it more so from a different perspective than you.
Complete decentralization implies that the citizen can govern themselves independently of an authority.
And as we’ve seen, the second that some sort of decentralization mechanism forms, the powers that be, (governments, individuals with a lot of power, nations, etc) acquire that decentralization tool as a hedge.
So when it’s all said and done, the powers that be will just acquire enough market share of the new invention/tool to remain largely in power.
That doesn’t mean don’t invest, rather it just means that decentralization is flawed for the reasons I listed above and there’s more technical explanations/another angle covered in your explanation