Distributed protocols that combat economy of scale

Shawn K. Quinn skquinn at rushpost.com
Sun Mar 6 17:11:03 PST 2016


On Sun, 2016-03-06 at 11:20 -0500, agave wrote:
> On Sun, 06 Mar 2016 16:41:05 +0100
> rysiek <rysiek at 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 at rushpost.com>




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