What exactly decentralized mean?

[Danielso]

When someone says “decentralized”, I’m thinking about Bitcoin. Is not run or controlled by anyone, and the only way to lose your coins is if you either transfer them or someone gets your seed. And the reason I’m asking is a recent article about a bug in the .eth domain auctions: 
https://www.coindesk.com/ethereum-name-service-auction-exploited-to-grab-apple-domain-and-it-cant-be-undone 

which claims that ENS could blacklist the domains mentioned in the article. Reading ENS’s website or articles posted by them, they claim to be decentralized service. As far as I know, it is the same case with Ethereum, controlled by multisig contract by few people (not sure how many). I also read about other coins being held in a multisig smart contract.

There was similar case with France.com not long ago, and people were complaining that it only happened because of the DNS centralization. What is the difference between DNS centralization and ENS decentralization, if such exists? As far as I know .bit and .zil once registered cannot be undone, blocked, or blacklisted, which seems a bit more decentralized.

So, if a service (ENS in this case) is controlled by 7 people, isn’t that centralized? I’m seriously confused by the meaning of decentralized when talking about crypto. If a service is controlled by certain number of people or institutions like the US Dollar and standard DNS, USD and DNS could be decentralized service and currency, right?


I’ll appreciate if someone could explain what the entire decentralization means.

[Febo]

When we talk about decentralisation in Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, there we talk about few different things:
Main what is mention is mining decentralisation. Miners secure the network. Not decentralised network could mean that someone can cheat and that would make Bitcoin insecure.  
Second part that is often mention is development decentralization. In beginning of 2009 when only Satoshi was developing, if something would happen to him, then Bitcoin would die. He was also able to make any change he liked back then. Now such things cant happen. They can is some small coins. Or tokens. For Etehreum tokens you already realised they are centralised. They are controlled by the one that made a smart contract. Tokens are much different then PoW cryptocurrencies.
Third part are exchanges/market. in 2013 and before when huge chunk of Bitcoins was exchanged on MtGox, Bitcoin market was centralised.  They were able to manipulate it easily. Today when there is more exchanges it is much harder.

If this 3 things are not decentralised, then that coin should not even be called cryptocurrency. I understand it takes time to achieve all that. But problem is that some coins dont have this even at end of the tunnel.

[Ucy]

I guess it changes nothing if the domain names are blacklisted. The hacker will still be able to use the names if the ENS is truely decentralized. Not sure about the blacklisting of decentralized stuff though. I think blacklisting should be done by the community via decentralized voting. In my opinion, the more the voters the better.
Where did you get the information that ENS is controlled by 7 people? Not really decentralized if true.

[Danielso]

I guess it changes nothing if the domain names are blacklisted. The hacker will still be able to use the names if the ENS is truely decentralized. Not sure about the blacklisting of decentralized stuff though. I think blacklisting should be done by the community via decentralized voting. In my opinion, the more the voters the better.
Where did you get the information that ENS is controlled by 7 people? Not really decentralized if true.

It’s on their webpage: https:ens.domains it was also in the documentation of ens.domains but the page is down rn. There was also post on Medium, but I can’t find which one it was.

I’ll try to find the Medium article, and if I do, I’ll update my reply. But it can be seen on their website.

[JCviggen]

of course they are all centralized. when there are people who are behind the project - this is a centralized tool. Decentralization is possible only with the complete absence of control by any persons

[semobo]

When we say something as decentralized then it should be on its own,many cryptos were not decentralized even they claims to be.I am not sure about what type of decentralization you were asking about because you are calling website names not the cryptos which decentralized thing might differ.

[r32godzilla]

If I think about it, I imagine something that is not created by someone for quick profit. It is something that was created to make better world and this idea is slowly adopted by people. No push, you know, slow adoption of a wonderful idea. It is something where every voice is important, every user is important. Not a ponzi scheme, not created by 1 person to steal money from a million of people. 

[gensol]

Decentralisation is a general term for something that no one has control over. For something to be decentralized, there's no single control, it has is open source anyone can be a part of or contribute to it.

[sorrros]

When we say something as decentralized then it should be on its own,many cryptos were not decentralized even they claims to be.I am not sure about what type of decentralization you were asking about because you are calling website names not the cryptos which decentralized thing might differ.

Almost every cryptocurrency needs a core team to be created, but after some time this team should leave the game and let community to manage the project. Just like Satoshi or Charlie Lee did it.  

[Bezobraznike]

   Anyone can find a definition of centralized and decentralized on the internet. Why to ask such question with such examples, I wonder?
Decentralized means that many people control what`s happening. In Bitcoin you have nodes, who is running the node has the copy of
the chain. How you can trick all the people who have a copy around the world?
   I think that decentralized means transparent. Anyone can check what`s happening in every moment, in centralized system
that can do just "chosen ones".

[hdtqisg]

Decentralized mean:
All transactions are transparent
The transactions are fully automated and independent
There are nodes to confirm transactions on the Blockchain!
A lot of other features, ...

[bonyaserg]

Personally, I believe that decentralization is when it is safe to trade on the exchange. And know that there is a secure user interface. Thanks to which each user needs simplicity and security in the cryptocurrency market. And now this ecosystem of buying or selling cryptocurrency, built on the basis of a decentralized service. So I wish you all a safe trade.

[allwelder]

For btc or a decentralized coin,there are some aspects at least IMO:

1.Nodes location decentralization:
Nodes operators geographical location are different,and the system can not be failed by one geographical danger events.

2.Nodes operators decentralization:
Systems nodes should be run by different entities to avoid single node failure.

3.Limitation free for participation:
Anyone can take part in the system to run as node at any time,and without any limitation.Not like delegates,not Master Nodes,not super nodes,Not holding stakes to as node,and so on.

4.Randomly:
For some situation that no need all nodes join,these involved nodes muse be selected randomly.

[silversurfer1958]

So, if a service (ENS in this case) is controlled by 7 people, isn’t that centralized? I’m seriously confused by the meaning of decentralized when talking about crypto. If a service is controlled by certain number of people or institutions like the US Dollar and standard DNS, USD and DNS could be decentralized service and currency, right?

As far as I know, the number of people engaged in something will not determine whether it is decentralized or focused. like the crypto market, there are hundreds of millions of people participating in daily transactions but it is still called decentralization.
Decentralization means it is not regulated by anything. Everything is decided by "supply" and "demand". for your case it may be centralize.

[semobo]

When we say something as decentralized then it should be on its own,many cryptos were not decentralized even they claims to be.I am not sure about what type of decentralization you were asking about because you are calling website names not the cryptos which decentralized thing might differ.

Almost every cryptocurrency needs a core team to be created, but after some time this team should leave the game and let community to manage the project. Just like Satoshi or Charlie Lee did it.  

True centralization lies where there is no control over their project even if the project team wants,just like the bitcoin even if satoshi wants to alter the codes of bitcoin it is not possible.But we can't have the same thing on every cryptos made in the recent days.

[TaliskerDarkStorm]

You could call the term decentralized like Torrent. When you use a Torrent, you pull the data from the downloaded file from computers scattered around the world. Even if the torrent site you are using deletes that file if there is still a source file on someone's computer, you can access it.

But it's a simple narrative, blockchain has a much more complicated structure than that, it's also much safer. Basically, decentralized means the absence of a centralized data store. This means that user data can be stored much more securely. In blockchain's structure, decentralized data is stored in a much more secure way, and that information is transparent in a way that everyone can see. Failure to modify transactions on Blockchain also adds extra security to blockchain.

As a result, the following example may be more enduring in his mind: a televised series being watched by millions of people in the world. And the scenes of the show are etched into the brains of the people watching it. But you'll never know which people were engraved with those scenes. And you won't be able to change the information in their minds.

[CryptoBry]

The concept of decentralization is central to Bitcoin as it is one of the many features that I think defined what this cryptocurrency is all about. The way I am seeing it, decentralization means that there is no single person or a group of people controlling the ecosystem and deciding for himself or themselves the day-to-day concerns of the platform. In this case, it can mean that the whole ecosystem has been set and the parameters are clearly defined already as if it has a life of its own and can function without the interventions usually done in centralized entities.

In the case of that controversial  Ethereum Naming Service (ENS) exploit, it is quite clear that they are all following the rules and because of that the domain names could not anymore be taken back because of the decentralized nature of that domain registration service for the ethereum network. The blacklisting is outside the scope of the platform and actually may not be effective at all, otherwise why they just asked for the voluntary return anyway?

The decentralized nature of any platform can then be a two-edged sword because there will be people whose "talent" is finding the weakness and then exploit it for their own gains.

[Danielso]

Thanks for the replies! And when I asked what “decentralized” mean, I was referring to the crypto world and what the community opinion is on this topic, not what google finds and the way the dictionary defines it. But I’m getting what decentralized would mean. And to avoid any confusion, I’m interested in this project because they seem to have been working as a non-profit for the past two years (not a quick buck project.) However, I don’t and probably never like the idea of someone having the absolute power over my account. Banks have that, that’s why we’re here—BitcoinTalk.org.

Somebody was wondering why I was giving this project as an example. Of course I will! Look at France.com’s recent case. So if you own France.eth does that mean you might have to handle it to them just because they feel like it? And you can find hand full of such names, which could lead to more cases like this—wait for someone to buy it, work to make it popular, and when the name becomes valuable they’ll use the rotten court system to hand the name over to them. Thanks but no thanks! This case was just an example, it could also happen with other businesses.