Distributed protocols that combat economy of scale

[rysiek]

Dnia niedziela, 6 marca 2016 16:52:13 agave pisze:
> > Such was also the idea in BitCoin. As we can see, there's a secondary
> > (not protocol-level) centralisation happening there. Cartels emerge,
> > because economy of scale makes them viable, and indeed profitable.
> 
> Hmm, I'm not sure if there's any particular way to solve that problem
> for BitCoin. I can't imagine any ways of establishing consensus among a
> completely decentralized protocol other than by popular consensus of
> the participants, and popular consensus can be manipulated easily as the
> post you mentioned shows.

Indeed, and the whole mining thing was supposed to protect BitCoin from such 
manipulation.

Granted, it made it hard, but at some point, with enough money/value involved, 
economy of scale made it viable. And that's what bothers me, and that's my 
question:
Is it possible to design a protocol in a way that makes economy of scale not 
work?

The BitCoin example is particularily complex, as there's no good way to tell, 
on the protocol level, "all those nodes are part of a single cartel, 
controlled by a single entity". But maybe there is a way of basing this on 
behaviour? If nodes X, Y, Z behave in a very similar manner, lower their 
weight in consensual decisions?

Apologies for being vague; I just feel there's something to it, but can't 
really put my finger on it.

I see economies of scale driving a lot of not-so-great outcomes 
(centralisation of e-mail providers; centralisation of ISPs and the general 
Internet infrastructure, introducing single points of failure in many places). 
And that makes me wonder what can be done about it.

> Maybe decentralization ought to be left to communications only?

How so?

-- 
Pozdrawiam,
Michał "rysiek" Woźniak

Zmieniam klucz GPG :: http://rys.io/pl/147
GPG Key Transition :: http://rys.io/en/147
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