I’m going to keep this short but I just fell down the rabbithole of crypto again and maybe it isn’t as bad as I thought. Many of their ideas are very similar to the fediverse’s. The idea of decentralized finance using a stablecoin sounds awesome to me. (though i’d much prefer to live in a world where money isn’t needed) Maybe the technology is actually good but the techbros and scammers ruin it with their false promises and complicated words. Hopefully, in a few years after the rest of those scammers have moved on to scamming with AI this tech could be truly used for meaningful purposes.
Yes. Blockchains will only remain as decentralized as their underlying incentive structure. In the case of Bitcoin, it turns out that form of “proof-of-work” was subject to Capitalism Attack. That is, there was someone with enough capital to commission the design and manufacture of highly specialized silicon, and their resulting competitive advantage led to the network consolidation we see today: specialized machines competing for who can burn the most electricity.
Ethereum fucked up in a different way. They did learn from Bitcoin’s weakness, and switched from an “open” proof-of-work blockchain to a “closed” proof-of-stake system …
… once again facilitating Capital Attack. Because who can buy the biggest stake? Yeah.
Once again, market forces (combined with extremely dubious design choices in their smart contract API) led to the centralized garbage we see today.
But it is possible to redirect the Capital Attack, judo style, and render it impotent. Look into “proof of space and time” if you’re interested in learning more. Carefully aligned incentives and weaponized Scaling Challenges can give the little guy a chance and send the Big Capital Gang back to their dirty-tricks drawing board.