Decentralization Is a Narrative Mirage | Hacker News Reader

Decentralization Is a Narrative Mirage

secondbreakfast.co

It sounds funny to say this, but sometimes I wonder if the obstacles to decentralization are simpler than it seems. Basically, it just requires the "always on appliance model" of home computers.

I've installed Briar. I like the decentralized aspect. It's certainly not harder to use than Whatsapp or Signal or whatever. However, it requires me to have it running in the background all the time, and requires me to have my phone on. This is a power drain on my phone and sort of a limitation relative to some central server that's always there.

The closest things to this are maybe a router or Alexa or whatever. My guess is if you could expand this to personal servers, like a nextcloud server-type thing in each home that you could expand, decentralization might go somewhere. People get this already, as they put them in their home for IoT, or to stream whatever, etc and so forth. You just get them used to these things being outward facing as well.

I think there will always be a need for centralized computing services, or at least a demand. But decentralization isn't too complicated technically or in terms of UX, it just requires a sort of cultural shift, which isn't really that different from use of Facebook or Twitter. It's just a cultural shift on the hardware side.

Federation and decentralization was a central part of early home computing. There's certainly reasons we moved away from it, but probably also reasons to return to it again.

Yes I think you may be right. Dappnode's vision is somewhat similar to what you describe:

https://dappnode.io/

tl;dr An always on node for multiple decentralized networks, and designed to earn the device owner income for that work. For example, Dappnode allows easy deployment of Proof of Stake validation nodes for the Ethereum Beacon Chain for those who have at least 32 ether to stake.

I think the key missing link to making Dappnode-like offerings competitive with the market leading web services is compensation for the Dappnode development team.

How do you financially incentivize and sustain a volume of development on the Dappnode product that is comparable to what is done on centralized web services, without compromising on decentralization?

Value-capture and centralization seem to be intimately linked, so that is a challenge.

Funding open source software may be something only governments can do at a sufficient scale. I'm happy to see that in line with that, Dappnode received funding from the EU.

> People get this already, as they put them in their home for IoT, or to stream whatever, etc and so forth

I use apple HomeKit, which requires a "home hub" to be always on (just select apple products basically). So I think its def possible that this could be thing, but I would be skeptical that this can grow too much in the mainstream. I occasionally unplug mine to move it around, and the thought of missing something would scare me out of moving it much (or using it much)

I guess Samsung DeX was a mistake, what's your opinion? Indoors you can keep the phone plugged into the grid. Outdoors you're basically offline.

Some interesting points, but technology pushes in both directions. Cars are decentralized trains, PCs are decentralized mainframes, etc. Sometimes the desire for autonomy or customization outweighs the efficiency gain from centralization.

That is an interesting thought, I like it. I sense centralization is a bit like interest rates. Fluctuating decade to decade, but historically rates have been ~declining for 2,000 years.

PCs are decentralized mainframes, but phones are now PCs and all they do is ping AWS/Azure all day long now.

FWIW, I think centralization has been a net positive for humanity. I'm glad I don't grow all my own food.

>>FWIW, I think centralization has been a net positive for humanity. I'm glad I don't grow all my own food.

Decentralization doesn't imply you grow all your own food. You could still purchase your food via multi-trillion dollar markets, but the suppliers to the market could all be independent farmers, for example.

Trade and specialization are completely orthogonal to the centralization <-> decentralization spectrum.

The suppliers to the markets might be independent farmers, but the entity bringing that market to one place is a centralized point in the whole thing. This is the model that Ebay, Uber, AirBNB and others made their multi billion dollar, industry disrupting business models on: become the centralized infrastructure on which a decentralized market can operate. At that point, are you really decentralized? Every city used to have their own taxi guilds, now every driver and passenger in every city contracts with one company. Which is less centralized?

> Trade and specialization are completely orthogonal to the centralization <-> decentralization spectrum.

Hmm, i don't know. I think the increase in specialization means the ability for "the one single best" actor. Like how NYT is one of the only thriving newspapers as many collapse, or how fewer companies make a bigger % of the cars in the market

Trade can reduce redundancy, that's true. With higher trade barriers between localities, you have one dominant player per locality. With seamless global trade, one player can dominate the entire global market.

However, trade also increases output, and with it, the diversity of goods/services.

60 years ago, television media was dominated by three networks. Today, there are dozens of cable networks, and millions of creators who broadcast through video sharing sites like Youtube. So there are many more sources of video-based media, and that is owing to greater economic sophistication brought about in large part by efficiency gains through greater commercial-exchange/specialization.

I don't think I buy that specialization/centralization are completely orthogonal, but I grant that they're different.

In this specific case, I'm making the claim that independent farmers have been and will continue to be on the decline. And in the general case, in the case of trade+specialization, it seems that over the long run the "best" at the trade will eventually own an outsize amount of the market. Technology enables them to win.

This seems by observation to be true in distribution, in farming, in content, in finance, etc.

Yeah, but you don't buy all your own food from one or two people.

Even food is more of a kind of federated model I think.

Ten companies control a vast number of all grocery brands:

https://i.huffpost.com/gen/585370/original.jpg

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/consumer-brands-owned-ten-com...

Who knew tech innovation followed a fractal trend.

This article feels more like it's trying to explain why centralization is a thing, and less trying to show why centralization is a good thing. In a way this is still true, centralization will always overpower any opposing force for decentralization, so there's not much of a point in making things decentralized. But the entire article hinges on this one point, which I want to address:

"Technology is a concentrating force. It always has been."

Technology is not a concentrating force. This is a misattribution. The economy, more specifically the economies of scale is a concentrating force. Technology may have the symptom of a trend towards concentration of power, but it itself is not the cause.

What technology does do is provide businesses with unprecedented global reach, and this is the driving force behind the remaining points in this article and the observation of massive centralization under technology. Technology gives you, amongst other things, the power to centralize, but is not the reason for centralization itself.

Some pretty thought provoking points. Most of the argument seems to hinge on the idea that power laws are proof of centralization and that we're just seeing them manifest in different forms. Most of the examples of dominant personalities all came about in a pretty democratic way. I think the real test will be if they become entrenched. If they can fall out of favor just as quick as they came into favor and be replaced by someone currently fairly anonymous, maybe it is not so centralized?

Also if we do see strong evidence of centralization in certain areas, does that mean this trend will continue in the future? I wonder if we are entering into a new phase (#3):

1. 1970-2000 - decentralized, and fringe.

2. 2001-2020 - centralized, and mainstream. eBay/Airbnb as examples platforms that normalized online transactions and acted as a single trusted intermediary

3. 2021+ - decentralized, and mainstream. A substantial majority now accept the internet. Where the intermediaries were once providing a service, they may be perceived as an obstacle.

I think this is too small of a time window. On the thousand-year horizon, centralization has been consistently increasing.

We may fluctuate a bit to more decentralized in the next decade. If bitcoin "wins", then on one hand it's a story of decentralization - no one controls it! - but on the other it compresses a bunch of currencies and wealth assets into one.

And hopefully the miners don't eventually become centralized...

I met a guy at a blockchain meetup in DC a couple years ago, who claimed to run a think-tank in town called The Center for Decentralization. IIRC his card had two or three slogans on it which sounded like the whole thing was a pretext for trolling the people there who took him seriously. He didn't act like it was, though.

I don't remember all of the copy but the best line was "decentralization starts here."

"Everybody sewed their own clothes until we built textile factories."

He's never heard of tailors?

I should’ve written, “Everybody sewed their own clothes until we specialized and people became tailors by trade.”

I feel like he makes interesting points but may not really understand decentralized technologies. Certainly doesn't mention too many details about them.

It's true that at the core, many decentralized technologies not only enable more diversity of locality but also more holism. So it can be to some degree a "centralization" towards certain public but well-distributed and non-centrally-controlled protocols.

But you really need to dig into the details to appreciate how decentralized protocols work and provide advantages over literally centralized often privately controlled closed systems.

It's really about using technology to work together effectively. Part of that is staying in sync in some way, and part of it is avoiding control chokepoints, and part of it is just allowing for freedom.

I've had experience writing distributed, decentralized software (mobile agents, distributed wireless sensor networks, animal wireless sensor networks) and the biggest impediments to building decentralized systems is that there is very little prior work to rely on. There are few libraries, examples, or clear explanations of the different approach that is needed. There are also some difficult trust problems with decentralized systems (are you OK with trusting your data is secure stored on several of your neighbors devices? Are you sure any random computer is secure to run your app on or use your data? Are you OK with letting some unknown vendor run tasks on your device and your data? There are solutions to these but they are not widely known or used.) In particular, decentralized systems can be very difficult to troubleshoot, especially if you are moving code from machine to machine and executing it wherever it lands. These problems can be solved but right now everyone has to solve them themselves from the ground up instead of relying on known common solutions. Some types of decentralized technologies are essentially the same as computer viruses and figuring out how to keep them under control is essential. Centralization became widespread because it was cheaper and offered centralized control (which is attractive to primates with hierarchical societal tendencies). Decentralization is possible, it's just going to require a similar amount of work to make it competitive and available.

> * There are solutions to these but they are not widely known or used.*

Do you have any links?

I feel like the article wasn't about any protocol-level of centralization. It reads more as a social/business level article than a technical one.

I’m not sure there’s a difference between them like you make out. I would argue the social depends on the technical and vice versa.

Do you have an example to help me understand what you see or mean?

What a good take on things. I'm a "decentralization is the future" evangelist, and there's nothing like a solid argument to make you question part of your worldview. It's like finding another stone tablet.

I think a part of the effectiveness of the article is the distilled take on the word "decentralization" and the (arguably meta) viewpoint that being able to use the same thing everywhere isn't decentralization, but centralization that appears decentralized.

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