On Sun, 2016-03-06 at 11:20 -0500, agave wrote:
On Sun, 06 Mar 2016 16:41:05 +0100 rysiek <rysiek@hackerspace.pl> wrote:
Hi,
as "A Miner Problem" shows, even a distributed, p2p solution like BitCoin suffers from a secondary centralisation flaw. Simply put, economy of scale lets the biggest player or a cartel of thoise basically undermine the "decentralized" part and take control over the network.
A similar thing has happened with e-mail and GMail. GMail basically dictates the rules in the e-mail world, simply because they're the largest and have the most users. Again, economy of scale is to blame.
So let me pose a question here: is it possible to design a protocol that does not succumb to economy of scale-based secondary centralisation? Is it possible to design a protocol that does not lend itself to economy of scale?
There's always things like TorChat for instant messaging and IPFS for content distribution. There's no concept of any centralisation in either - they're completely peer-to-peer. I'm not sure why you drew a comparison to e-mail - it's inherently centralized, just among several servers.
As used today, with many people using services like GMail, Hotmail, etc it could be considered centralized. However, in the sense that I can set up my own email server, and have someone email me at a given address without having to get approved by a central authority first, it is decentralized. Email doesn't even strictly require DNS to work, as there is an email address syntax (rarely used these days, but still technically valid) for addressing email directly to a given userid at a specific IP address by dotted quad. -- Shawn K. Quinn <skquinn@rushpost.com>