Explain me Like I'm 5 why Bitcoin is decentralized

[Bitemarx]

2 words : Liberty Reserve.

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[CIYAM]

They changed the limit so now it is very difficult to send 0.0000001 even with the miner fee, all to bring down a company (Satoshi dice)

You don't recall all the complaints about SD and people running out of disk space?

It they did nothing about it then I am 100% sure you would be complaining about that now.

[crumbs]

Being decentralized in concept doesn't mean that centralization is impossible, simply that it is not essential.
Decentralized model also doesn't imply that the changes to its structure are sound.
These changes may favor centralization (think single-celled organisms evolving into multi-celled organisms).
Does this help?

[CIYAM]

And look we are still running out of disk space it did nothing. They harmed a company that is the bigger point, but this is bitcoin no one sees that part. Take down the capitalist is the motto here.

Well - a good retort (and I know you like to argue) - I think that the model of wasting blockchain space did need to be stopped but for sure maybe it hasn't worked perfectly. As far as "taking down the capitalist" I think that Bitcoin gambling sites are still doing very well.

[justanickname]

They changed the limit so now it is very difficult to send 0.0000001 even with the miner fee, all to bring down a company (Satoshi dice)

You don't recall all the complaints about SD and people running out of disk space?

It they did nothing about it then I am 100% sure you would be complaining about that now.

It is probably a good move, but can't you sense this is a dictatorship?

[gweedo]

And look we are still running out of disk space it did nothing. They harmed a company that is the bigger point, but this is bitcoin no one sees that part. Take down the capitalist is the motto here.

Well - a good retort (and I know you like to argue) - I think that the model of wasting blockchain space did need to be stopped but for sure maybe it hasn't worked perfectly. As far as "taking down the capitalist" I think that Bitcoin gambling sites are still doing very well.

If they were dedicated to fixing the blockchain they would have more than one dev working on it Peter is the only one working on the problem. But now Gavin is focusing on his this payment protocol. We are in beta and he is adding more protocols to a beta, and the protocol is already broken. It requires a centralized CA. So if you can call bitcoin decentralized then go for it, but it isn't and I don't call it decentralized anymore when I explain it people. I call it p2p that is the correct term for it.

[CIYAM]

It is probably a good move, but can't you sense this is a dictatorship?

It was *agreed* to by all the major pools - so I fail to see how that is a dictatorship (unless you include all the major pools as being the dictators).

[CIYAM]

If they were dedicated to fixing the blockchain they would have more than one dev working on it Peter is the only one working on the problem. But now Gavin is focusing on his this payment protocol. We are in beta and he is adding more protocols to a beta, and the protocol is already broken. It requires a centralized CA. So if you can call bitcoin decentralized then go for it, but it isn't and I don't call it decentralized anymore when I explain it people. I call it p2p that is the correct term for it.

My understanding (correct me if I am wrong) is that the payment protocol is less than 1000 LoC (so not a huge undertaking) and that it has been designed so that another system (instead of the CA one) can be easily put in place.

I am not a Foundation member nor am I any sort of sycophant of any of the devs but I don't think that they have "lost the plot" at this stage (although I do think that scalability is probably the main thing they should be focused on now).

[corebob]

Its decentralized because it is the only way to prevent one (or a few) to take control. Its kind of like a forced democracy I guess.
The majority has to agree to any changes in order for those changes to work, basically.

Nobody in the network should agree to downgrade or upgrade without considering the changes.
Strictly speaking, the community as a whole is the foundation, and should be the ones to accept or reject a change.

[The 4ner]

1)how can one say that bitcoin is totally decentralized?

It is p2p not decentralized Gavin has too much power, look at what he has done. Force dust limits, force use of broken code in the payment protocol. Miners don't care about the community they go where the money is.

2)Where there are people there is corruption, Aren't we suppose to be worried that this limited group of people will ruin the protocol?

Yes you should be, and but their isn't anything one or any group can do. The foundation helps in hiding this, we will see when in less than a year when they are voted out, I doubt they will leave power in the foundation.

3)Can someone explain in a nutshell what can the developers change and what they can't change in the protocol?

They changed the limit so now it is very difficult to send 0.0000001 even with the miner fee, all to bring down a company (Satoshi dice)

Very much how the current situation is.

[Come-from-Beyond]

The majority [of hashpower] has to agree to any changes in order for those changes to work, basically.

Fixed that for u.

[bluemeanie1]

wiki continues:
"Since the release of Bitcoin v0.3, changes to the protocol have been minor and always in agreement with community consensus."

see: COIN_DUST.

what is exactly this "community consensus"? who are these people? I don't remember anyone asking me if I agree for each modification they are doing to the code. Ain't I part of the community?

The truth is that all I do is download bitcoin QT and hope for the best, while there are 100 or 1000 (or any other small amount) of people
who makes the decisions for us all.

So I am asking:
1)how can one say that bitcoin is totally decentralized?
2)Where there are people there is corruption, Aren't we suppose to be worried that this limited group of people will ruin the protocol?
3)Can someone explain in a nutshell what can the developers change and what they can't change in the protocol?

in my view, it has diverged from the initial intentions of the project.  Various groups latched on, the 'mining' industry, various services groups, ,etc.  It's looking more and more like a traditional payment network every day.  This is why I'm not interested in working on the core Bitcoin.  In order to manage the ever growing volume of transactions, they will need to compromise more and more of the initial Satoshi architecture goals.  Proof of Work is a failure.

as the COIN_DUST incident shows, the developers have the power to introduce changes to the default code to actually discriminate against certain transactions.  In my view, this change was warranted(and generally well intended) because people were abusing the block chain.  It also showed however that the developers do wear badges here and the playing field is not level.

[bluemeanie1]

The majority [of hashpower] has to agree to any changes in order for those changes to work, basically.

Fixed that for u.

and the problem is that we have hashing monopolies.  Is this really money for the people?  No, it isn't.

this is why I invented Confidence Chains.  Doesn't require mining but it is distributed/p2p.

[acoindr]

It may help you to think of it like the Internet. Would you say the Internet is centralized? That one country completely controls it?

Of course not. The Internet is also decentralized.

Now, is does happen that the U.S. has a large measure of control and influence over the Internet, mostly because it's the country that created the Internet. The U.S. is home to the DNS root servers and ICANN, the organization that administers Top Level Domains (TLDs) like .com, .co.uk, etc. Since people are good with remembering names, but bad with remembering numbers like IP addresses, shutting down or corrupting domain name service would largely make the Internet unusable for most of the world.

That sounds like the Internet is centralized, but it's not. The U.S. maintains an influential role because it's quite capable and has been doing a pretty good job. If everyone is happy there is no need to change. However, the Internet is an idea, just like Bitcoin is an idea. Should the U.S. abuse or otherwise deserve to be stripped of its current role the rest of the world would probably ensure that happened, because fundamentally the Internet is simply about connecting computers globally; that belongs to everyone innately.

So you can see how there can be still be pseudo-leaders of something fundamentally meant to be decentralized. Bitcoin works very similarly.

Note: if I recall there has been some discussion about reworking the setup of the root servers. Also, this is all from the top of my head, so anyone with technical corrections please jump in.

[franky1]

everyone here seems to be complaining that Gavin A and his team are ignoring requests from the community.

this is because its his program and he is getting paid by members of the foundation, so he will ocourse do as they say.

the good thing about bitcoin is that anyone can take for example 0.6 of the QT client. (before the SD patch) and remove the transaction fee demand prompt, add in just the features they want. and release that as a their own program.

YOU do not have to rely on Gavin A's team. if you dont like a patch then get a coder to unpatch it, but leaving in the latest bug fixes..

people can then check the source code is legit, and spread the word and everyone is free to use the modified version by this new person.

[bluemeanie1]

It may help you to think of it like the Internet. Would you say the Internet is centralized? That one country completely controls it?

Of course not. The Internet is also decentralized.

Now, is does happen that the U.S. has a large measure of control and influence over the Internet, mostly because it's the country that created the Internet. The U.S. is home to the DNS root servers and ICANN, the organization that administers Top Level Domains (TLDs) like .com, .co.uk, etc. Since people are good with remembering names, but bad with remembering numbers like IP addresses, shutting down or corrupting domain name service would largely make the Internet unusable for most of the world.

the problem is much bigger than what you describe.



NSA's Lucky Break: How the U.S. Became Switchboard to the World
http://www.wired.com/politics/security/news/2007/10/domestic_taps

"All the traffic in the world went through Washington," Woodcock says. "But it was coincidence that it was Washington, more or less, and it was private-sector. And it probably wasn't tapped for at least a couple of years."

Bitcoin is not really decentralized anymore.  It's a system increasingly owned by a number of commerical enterprises.  Even IBM seems to be poking around these days.  Remember IBM is the primary technology support for all the big financial firms, including the ones that got the trillions in bailout money.  It's a clear sign of the current state of this particular corner of the field.

[bluemeanie1]

everyone here seems to be complaining that Gavin A and his team are ignoring requests from the community.

this is because its his program and he is getting paid by members of the foundation,

if we want some system that requires a foundation where the kind of people who put 'High School Class President' on their resume email you about running for office then I think it's fair to say that this thing is no longer decentralized.

[acoindr]

So you can see how there can be still be leaders of something fundamentally meant to be decentralized. Bitcoin works very similarly.

The Internet isn't decentralized no one calls it that, never heard the internet called decentralized.

But it is decentralized. If it's not where is the owner/control?

[corebob]

The majority [of hashpower] has to agree to any changes in order for those changes to work, basically.

Fixed that for u.

and the problem is that we have hashing monopolies.  Is this really money for the people?  No, it isn't.

this is why I invented Confidence Chains.  Doesn't require mining but it is distributed/p2p.

Sounds interesting. Both mining and the POW hack always bothered me.
Ideally, everything should be decided, accepted and rejected by the network

[bluemeanie1]

The majority [of hashpower] has to agree to any changes in order for those changes to work, basically.

Fixed that for u.

and the problem is that we have hashing monopolies.  Is this really money for the people?  No, it isn't.

this is why I invented Confidence Chains.  Doesn't require mining but it is distributed/p2p.

Sounds interesting. Both mining and the POW hack always bothered me

there will be some upcoming releases soon.  I don't talk TOO much about it, because too many people on here monkey whatever claims I make, distracting away from what I'm doing and greatly distorting the facts.  It's turning out to be a huge problem.

you can find the initial whitepaper here: http://www.altchain.org