In today’s debate, we tackle the claim, “Ethereum is Centralized.” It’s quite controversial because Ethereum doesn’t want to be called “centralized” and blockchains are not supposed to be centralized. We’re going to break this down logically – can we measure how centralized or decentralized Ethereum is?
I’m joined by Paul Apivat Hanvongse. He’s a contributor and analyst at TruStory, a teacher at Lambda school, and a consultant.
Here are the time-stamps for the important points in the discussion:
[04:10] The decentralized-centralized spectrum and looking at the subsystems of Ethereum
[05:15] Breaking the claim down into 6 sub-claims
1. Ethereum is too reliant on a handful of private companies to survive
2. Ethereum “Block Reward” cuts can be agreed on seemingly without objection
3. Tokens remain in the hands of a few people
4. Influence is concentrated in a few hands
5. Infura dominates the market for node infrastructure available to developers.
6. Etherium’s blockchain is too bloated and people can’t run full nodes
[06:59] The context for this debate – Preston Byrne’s tweetstorm from Jan 2019, his subsequent article – Ethereum is (arguably) doomed to be centralized – and Paul’s analysis of the claim on TruStory’s Discourse forum.
[08:45] If the Ethereum foundation disappeared today, could the ecosystem survive and thrive. Could we still make progress on the E2.0 roadmap?
[10:20] Paul is ready to challenge the sub-claim, “Ethereum is too reliant on a handful of companies to survive” with 30 TruStakes!
[12:10] The process of getting EIPs (Ethereum Improvement Proposals) approved by the community before any decision gets made
[13:40] Paul challenges the 2nd sub-claim with 100 TruStakes!
[14:20] The Parity Hack and the discussion on whether or not to Hard Fork the Etherium protocol to recover the stolen funds
[15:55] The Etherium pre-mine – a small group of people may have had tokens before the ICO. Can this small group of token holders exert influence on the system, e.g. via price manipulation?
[19:04] We don’t have a lot of data on how concentrated the wallets and tokens are, so it’s hard to challenge the 3rd sub-claim confidently. Preethi thinks that while the token holders can’t exert influence on changes to the protocol, they may be able to exert influence on the narrative around Ethereum, so she backs the claim
[21:55] If you’re building a dAPP, you need to run an Etherium node. It’s like needing servers when you build an application, so you use AWS (Amazon Web Services.) Infura is the AWS of the decentralized world.
[23:47] Paul and Preethi back the claim that Infura being a point of failure is an indication that Etherium is centralized.
[25:00] The size of the Ethereum blockchain is around 2 terabytes, and it’s only getting larger. The “Archival Node” is the entire history of the blockchain – it takes weeks to download. The “Full Node” is enough for most people and allows people to compute present and future transactions.
[26:46] Paul says it not just a hardware or bandwidth issue but also a know-how issue – to install, operate, and maintain an Etherium node. It’s not easy for the average person. Preethi and Paul back the sub-claim
[30:11] It’s not a straightforward claim to say Ethereum is centralized or decentralized. It’s multi-dimensional and can get more or less decentralized over time, depending on how the protocol evolves.
[33:03] Why Etherium is an easy target to attack with the “centralized” claim and the different contexts of the Etherium launch vs. the Bitcoin launch
What did you think of the debate?
Do you have any questions about Haseeb’s or my arguments?
Do you have any specific topics you’d like us to debate?
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