There was a thread on twitter (
https://twitter.com/taoeffect/status/832041974735654912) debating this question and I wanted to move it here since discussions on twitter usually aren't that productive.
In my view Stellar is definitely permission-less. Anyone can run a validator. You don't need permission from anyone to join or use the network.
Jed, it seems like there may be a misunderstanding over what the word "permissionless" means.
Yes, anyone can run a validator, but that does not make Stellar permissionless. The question is: permission for what?
Validation refers to validation of a log of events. In other words, validation is
listening.
Consensus, on the other hand, is
both listening and talking.
Stellar does not allow anyone to talk (participate in consensus of the
creation of the log). It only allows anyone to listen (validate what the talkers are saying).
If the talkers/consensus-group/cartel is creating a namespace, as is the proposal in the IETF ILC list, then any proposal to restrict consensus to any one system is by definition a hostile takeover of the ICANN/DNS namespace by a cartel.
To quote from
this message on the IETF ILC:
What this group is doing, which is not very clear from its self-description, is the creation of a consensus-based namespace.
The Internet does not currently have consensus-based namespaces.
DNS, for example, does not operate on any real form of consensus.
For this reason, it is also not secure. Anyone who can MITM a network connection, can override apple.com <http://apple.com/> to be anything they want, along with any other name in the insecure, federated ICANN namespace.
A *consensus-based namespace*, on the other hand—as this group and [trans] are proposing—consolidates ownership and definition of the entire namespace to a group that attempts to maintain consensus.
The means by which consensus is achieved *matters a great deal*, but some general statements are possible too.
In the example of Stellar, consensus is restricted to a small cartel, and the protocol's inability to resolve consensus forks means that this cartel will most likely only get smaller over time, since participation requires the _permission_ of the existing cartel. FYI, Stellar's marketing in this department is also highly misleading [1].
What you're left with is a log, and it can be "append-only", but that really doesn't matter much if the proposal is for the /entire Internet/ to use *just* that one log. That is tantamount to a global, Internet takeover by a cartel.
It's important to emphasize: _such a group would have *total power* to decide who is and who is not allowed to have a website._
A consensus-based namespace offers security—but only if it's not a defacto namespace, but one of an arbitrary number of consensus-based namespaces.
Getting back to your comment above:
Keep in mind that this can also easily happen in bitcoin, if a cartel of miners with over 51% of the hashing decide to stop accepting blocks from people outside of cartel they can do this. The difference is in bitcoin it would be hard to ignore the cartel and there is economic incentive for the cartel to take all the blocks.
You'll notice I am also against using Bitcoin to define a
defacto namespace:
https://twitter.com/taoeffect/status/832081089787097088No
single consensus system can be a defacto Internet namespace. Let a thousand consensus-based namespaces bloom.
