[wanderingstan]

A friend of mine joined chain.com and, as I understand it, their value proposition is to handle the load of blockchain while providing trusted access to whatever needs to be known. I'm no expert, but this seems like the right sort of solution for the problem you pose. Blockchain management is handled in the cloud, and clients (including embedded devices) talk securely to a trusted cloud service to get the relevant details.

[na85]

That seems self defeating. None of the advantages of a decentralized system are realized by centralizing the blockchain

[sliverstorm]

That's perhaps my favorite part of Bitcoin. For good or bad, it was started by people rallying against the big centralized banks, and now at every turn we are hitting reasons why centralization makes a lot of sense. I half suspect that eventually it will come to resemble the current centralized systems, whether people want it or not. For example, the number of complete blockchains is dwindling as more people individually elect to start using partial-blockchain clients because of space & traffic.

It's especially endearing to me because it's my primary objection to anarchists (of whom I have several as friends)- that the system they envision just isn't stable, and we arrived at the system we have now for that reason.

[TeMPOraL]

Chesterton's fence comes to mind.

Also, as Yvain pointed out in his excellent article[0], we might be fucking ourselves over big time with this drive towards decentralization and trustless systems. As we fight against corruption and abuse, we're building systems that don't allow us to coordinate even in principle. Today it's tax avoidance and buying pot on-line, tomorrow it will be untraceable trade of fissionable material and weaponized biotech.

Building trustless systems seems like a cool hack, but I think we'd be better off working on a way to improve coordination.

[0] - http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/

[vidarh]

I find this line of thinking unconvincing. There is a vast difference between voluntary centralisation from which you can withdraw at any time, and forced centralisation from which there is no practical way to withdraw without huge sacrifices.

Many socialist and anarchist ideologists are/were perfectly fine with centralisation of production, as long as decision making is decentralised, and participation is a result of free choice and can be withdrawn.

The capability of decentralisation in Bitcoin is important because it acts as a safeguard against forced centralisation and coercion. As long as the capability remains, whether or not people for practical/efficiency reasons opts for centralisation ought not cause most anarchists any major concern.

[jarek]

> The capability of decentralisation in Bitcoin is important because it acts as a safeguard against forced centralisation and coercion. As long as the capability remains, whether or not people for practical/efficiency reasons opts for centralisation ought not cause most anarchists any major concern.

I'm probably misunderstanding something, but isn't it more that blockchain technology allows decentralisation, while dominance of any particular deployment supports centralisation? As I understand it, once Bitcoin is centralised, the 51% can control it as they wish, and the only alternative is to set up a wholly separate Bitcoin2 chain, or another altcoin.

(Again resulting in cryptocurrency being a bad store of value.)

[vidarh]

There are two "levels" here: Centralisation to more than 51% means you have to trust the central "authority". The safeguard there is that if the central authority starts misbehaving, the technology is out there, and everyone can start using it one a new blockchain as you suggest, while agreeing on a blacklist.

The lower level is centralisation into a small-ish pool of large services where no service exceeds 51%. That's what I was mainly thinking about.

We've seen in the past how Bitcoin has adjusted to the threat of 51% with people withdrawing capacity from large pools etc. in response.

In either case the point is that the existence and open availability of the technology acts as a deterrence to coercion because the act of trying to take advantage of a 51% attack will send people running for the hills (and the existence of altcoins makes that even easier).

We've seen people willingly pull back from potentially even "accidentally" exceeding 51% of the Bitcoin network in the past for that very reason.

The point is not absolute decentralisation at all cost (though some anarchist tendencies do want to maximise decentralisation), but the ability to withdraw consent and unilaterally decentralise.

[joe_coin]

I agree with you 100% silverstrom and have another post to that effect brewing.

[colordrops]

As long as the hashing power is distributed so that no single group has more than 50%, then it doesn't matter if some people trust someone else to manage the blockchain for them. Bitcoin's benefits still exist. If everyone trusted one entity to manage the blockchain, then you'd be right, but that's not what is being suggested here.

[rfrank]

What defines "trusted access?" One of the points of bitcoin / blockchain is not having to trust anyone involved.