Decentralization
Decentralization or decentralisation is a state opposite to centralization. In describes the process in which activities, weight in decision making are distributed or delegated away from a central, authoritative location or group.
Decentralisation is a natural approach for building robust, reliable, trustless and censorship-resistant blockchain networks without central authorities or single points of failure. In decentralised network users have reliable trustless access to the state of the distributed data and confidence that operations with this data were not forged, censored or erased by any central authority. Therefore decentralisation is a primary solution to the data availability problem.
Decentralization is the central ethos of blockchain technology. Benefits of decentralisation are the main advantage of blockchain solutions. However, not all solutions are the same. In every solution there are threats to decentralisation. These threats set a risk that benefits of decentralisation will decline or vanish.
Layers of decentralisation
Benefits of decentralised solutions
Threats to decentralisation
Incomplete or faulty consensus rules
Database rebranding
Permission for participation
Checkpoint providers
Watchtowers
Colusion of validators
51% attack
Long range attacks
Parameter Generation Ceremony
Unfair economics
High orphan block percent
High volatility of rewards
High business entry point
Forces which stimulate centralisation
Asic manufacturers
Mining pools
Natural resources
Rich get richer problem
Poor data availability
Providers of the off chain data
Poor design of incentives
Bootstrapping solutions
Achieve nodes
See also
References
This page is a stub. Help by expanding it.