Author Topic: PROPOSED DEFINITION: Sufficiently Decentralized  (Read 2142 times)

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Offline Stan

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One of the main criticism about BitShares from competitors is that "Bitshares is a centralized system, because it is maintained by 101 delegates, but the 101 delegates are controlled by BM's votes". Is there any good response to this question?

BM controls a small percentage that can be easily overridden if people have a mind to.  If they are content with the results of his small influence, they may be happy to go with that result.  The point is the shareholders have the power to act, whether they choose to or not.

None of the industry leaders ahead of us on coinmarketcap.org give any form of control to owners at all.

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Offline Stan

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Sufficiently Decentralization is a state which the system will not be compromised significantly by any illicit parties , since they are not likely to gain enough power to reach the critical point without facing counter measure from other distributed owners of the system .


https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=916696.msg10095352#msg10095352
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Offline ripplexiaoshan

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One of the main criticism about BitShares from competitors is that "Bitshares is a centralized system, because it is maintained by 101 delegates, but the 101 delegates are controlled by BM's votes". Is there any good response to this question?
BTS committee member:jademont

Offline Ander

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Sufficiently Decentralization is a state which the system will not be compromised significantly by any illicit parties , since they are not likely to gain enough power to reach the critical point without facing counter measure from other distributed owners of the system .

Thats very good.
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Offline btswildpig

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Sufficiently Decentralization is a state which the system will not be compromised significantly by any illicit parties , since they are not likely to gain enough power to reach the critical point without facing counter measure from other distributed owners of the system .
« Last Edit: January 09, 2015, 06:53:02 pm by btswildpig »
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Offline Stan

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PROPOSED DEFINITION:  Sufficiently Decentralized

We waste a lot of time on other forums arguing with other tribes about who is the most decentralized.

I just posted this suggestion: 
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=916696.msg10092970#msg10092970

...which reads as follows:

Quote
Definition.  "A system is sufficiently decentralized if there is no likely to be reached number of individuals who can collude or be coerced or seduced into acting successfully against the interests of its owners without detection."

(It would be good to reach a consensus on this definition - I just made up this straw man on the fly.)

I think we are evolving away from the idea that the only way to achieve this definition is by brute force node maximization.  The bleeding edge of research in this industry is in systems that achieve sufficient decentralization more efficiently.  I summarized how BitShares aims to do this in an earlier post on this thread:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=916696.msg10085453#msg10085453

So a better discussion to be having is whether a particular implementation has achieved adequate protection from bad actors, recognizing that further efforts to decentralize beyond "good enough" has other costs that must be traded against whatever else the design must sacrifice to decentralize beyond that threshold.

This will enable block chain businesses to be profitable sooner.  And that will be good for overall industry growth!

What are the thoughts of our BitShares experts?
Anything said on these forums does not constitute an intent to create a legal obligation or contract of any kind.   These are merely my opinions which I reserve the right to change at any time.