Is True Decentralization a Myth?

[plast555]

No, I don't think it's a myth.

There are hundreds of decentralized applications around. Besides, some projects offer decentralized internet, decentralized storage, and much more.

Also, privacy coins allow users to exchange completely confidential (literally) money.

I've used almost all of them, and my opinion is that everything is going well by now.

[masterrex]

Decentralization exists. Our perception of it is wrong. Some say Bitcoin has centralized mining, not true decentralization. Instead of thinking about absolute decentralization, we should think of increasing money options. Having crypto options is a way to decentralize our money from existing financial system.

Even within Bitcoin, if you take all the forks of Bitcoin into account, the whole ecosystem is fairly decentralized. We have many coin variants, mining algorithms. That is decentralization.

Our lazy brain somehow fools us to think decentralization means search for truth. Decentralization is not about searching for the absolute, centralized truth, one true coin. It's about freedom to choose what we want to do. Decentralization is detachment from existing system. We give it up to find new alternatives. They could be better or worse than what we leave behind. The choice is always ours. Do Your Own Research.

Great analysis mate. Some of us was expecting that the 100 percent decentralization was achievable in our current financial system (*the truth its not) I think its only a part of a larger perspective, how can we achieve a complete decentralization when our financial institution, commodities etc. still rely and built on the top of a *Centralized finance  ecosystem. Let's accept the truth that Decentralization is just an alternative option of a financial governance. 

[DaMut]

No, I don't think it's a myth.

There are hundreds of decentralized applications around. Besides, some projects offer decentralized internet, decentralized storage, and much more.

Also, privacy coins allow users to exchange completely confidential (literally) money.

I've used almost all of them, and my opinion is that everything is going well by now.

It is.
They are claiming to be decentralized storage but they keep the data on their server which is centralized, there are so many projects claimed to be a decentralized project but none of them is a true decentralized project.
a true decentralization works in the theory but not applicable in reality because the government will take a measure to get involved in it. they will not allow such a thing called pure decentralization because it might affect them.

[nutriagrigia]

No, I don't think it's a myth.

There are hundreds of decentralized applications around. Besides, some projects offer decentralized internet, decentralized storage, and much more.

Also, privacy coins allow users to exchange completely confidential (literally) money.

I've used almost all of them, and my opinion is that everything is going well by now.

Now confidentiality is at a very weak level for most coins, which say that they are private. in most cases, all transactions can be tracked

[Convery]

I believe that it is matter of time. Creators and early investors of many altcoins now hold a big portion of "their" cryptocurrencies, but they will slowly distribute coins among users because sooner or later they will be pushed to do that. Look at Bitcoin, the decentralization is growing day by day because Bitcoins are slowly distributed among all users. And if you distribute these coins in airdrop, you will get competitive advantage like Stellar did it.

[BigBoy89]

IMO it's not a myth. It's more likely people are not ready for.

Centralization creates volume, liquidity and so on. Not only on exchanges but in any market. That's why you have a middle-man in almost every business who makes centralization and then liquidity. At food markets, at crypto exchanges, at fiat currency exchanges, etc.

Platform evolves and we are witnessing more and more useful DApps. IMO DPapps are the 'true' future and I'm investing every free resources in it.

[airdnasxela]

As what you have said already, cryptocurrency have some level of centralization… Decentralization depends on how each person perceive that word. If you feel it's decentralized and if it meets your expectation of decentralization, then you can call it as decentralized. Doesn't mean that a currency is decentralized, there's no involvement of others. No. As long as there is someone higher, or someone who can control most things, and you're under it, just like the government. It's not a full decentralized system. It's like decentralization has a limitation and one part is the only one decentralized but not everything.

[sana54210]

I don’t think that there is any system that is developed by human being that can be 100% accurate as we could still see some problems like the one you pointed out but that is not to say bitcoin is not a true decentralized coin, it may not have been 100% but to an extent still better than most of the other project that we have in the market which I never expect them to even have such thing because of the selfish interest they will always out in developing such project.

Secondly, we the later users are the ones that have even turned this around for blockchain and for the main reason the cryptocurrency was established because if not, we would not be seeing all these centralized exchanges but more of decentralized exchange.

[duuuuude]

I have already expressed my opinion on the matter but I think again will not be superfluous. I say that decentralization is the shifting of fees for the data centers and most importantly it is shifting responsibility for possible glitches on the shoulders of the hamsters, no more, and the blockchain is getting complete control when reaching someone 51% computational power.

[vanya.pronin.1983]

There are two kinds of crypto currencies. One of them is centralised like Ripple and another is decentralised like Ethereum. I do not believe that decentralised coins will fully replace traditional services, but a kind of a mixture is very possible.

[Xardasim]

At least considering that there are people who care about it, decentralization is not a myth. In fact there is, but giving very little worth.

Centralization creates volume, liquidity and so on. Not only on exchanges but in any market. That's why you have a middle-man in almost every business who makes centralization and then liquidity. At food markets, at crypto exchanges, at fiat currency exchanges, etc.

Will there be no volume, no liquidity without centralization? I don't think like you. You exclude decentralization because you are used to the centralized system.

[chunnu39]

Due to FATF guidelines its mandatory to all exchanges to do kyc to all there users and exchanges also share there users information to other exchange for cross border payments. in thats senerio true decentralization is not achieved because of interface governments.

[plast555]

No, I don't think it's a myth.

There are hundreds of decentralized applications around. Besides, some projects offer decentralized internet, decentralized storage, and much more.

Also, privacy coins allow users to exchange completely confidential (literally) money.

I've used almost all of them, and my opinion is that everything is going well by now.

Now confidentiality is at a very weak level for most coins, which say that they are private. in most cases, all transactions can be tracked

Decentralization and privacy are entirely different things.

You can use the privacy coins on the market right now to completely cover your tracks. Monero, Zcoin are a few of them.

On the contrary, projects like Chipmixer are wholly rubbish and useless. Still, if you want privacy, privacy coins are a solution, I'm sorry, but this is off the table. You can do your research.

No, I don't think it's a myth.

There are hundreds of decentralized applications around. Besides, some projects offer decentralized internet, decentralized storage, and much more.

Also, privacy coins allow users to exchange completely confidential (literally) money.

I've used almost all of them, and my opinion is that everything is going well by now.

It is.
They are claiming to be decentralized storage but they keep the data on their server which is centralized, there are so many projects claimed to be a decentralized project but none of them is a true decentralized project.
a true decentralization works in the theory but not applicable in reality because the government will take a measure to get involved in it. they will not allow such a thing called pure decentralization because it might affect them.

The servers of the projects claiming to be decentralized are located in different countries. That's why they don't have their servers.

Surprisingly, someone who says these words believes in Bitcoin, if you don't believe in real decentralization, why do you follow cryptocurrencies?

I'm sorry, man, but I've got some bad news for you, there are decentralization and privacy. Please read some technical documentation before participating in the discussions here.

[Apened]

Since Bitcoin was created, Blockchain technology promised to bring full decentralization over people's funds. Each cryptocurrency has a certain level/degree of decentralization depending on the consensus algorithm used and the number of distributed nodes worldwide. While Bitcoin is known to be the most decentralized cryptocurrency today, it still has a certain level of centralization attached to it. PoW is not perfect, as well as, PoS, DPoS and other consensus algorithms.

In the search of "True Decentralization", I found out that there's no such thing. One way or another, a cryptocurrency will have some level of centralization as nothing is perfect in this life. Which is why, I'm starting to think if "True Decentralization" is more of a myth than anything else? What are your thoughts?

It really depends, for me decentralization exist but not in all crypto projects. Another thing is because of the SEC regulation it open up the decentralization was been broken where we can freely do everything without submitting any informations of us.

[libert19]

It's a funny discussion, since it proves that more and more people is starting to actually care about this topic, meanwhile we see everyone trade their favourite cryptocurrencies on centralized exchanges, which is as close to as centralized as you can get. It boggles me every single day, that no one seems to scare, I guess everyone is just in it for the money Haha! 

Well, money is certainly a primary point, ask yourself a question, would you care about BTC if it had no value?

[supercanada1]

IMO it's not a myth. It's more likely people are not ready for.

Centralization creates volume, liquidity and so on. Not only on exchanges but in any market. That's why you have a middle-man in almost every business who makes centralization and then liquidity. At food markets, at crypto exchanges, at fiat currency exchanges, etc.

Platform evolves and we are witnessing more and more useful DApps. IMO DPapps are the 'true' future and I'm investing every free resources in it.

It varies from coin to coin. Some coins indeed are centralized in nature. Ripple is the most famous one among them. It is in top 10 and has existed for years now. Regardless of his centralized nature, the coin is being used by enterprises. It is fast and transactions are not too expensive wither. Bitcoin, on the other hand, is the number one crypto coin which is truly decentralized. Investors love this feature. Governments hate decentralized stuff.

[jrrsparkles]

We may not get complete decentralization from cryptos but we can get more freedom of using it compared to the current fiat,Why this is happening because we choose decentralized platforms to by cryptos which are working under the regulations of governments so they need to follow the laws from government so they seek for consumer details which makes the system not to be completely decentralized.

If everyone buying cryptos from decentralized platforms then this may change.

I don't know what decentralization can be exactly other than what it is now in case of crypto currencies or bitcoin, to be very specific. Decentralized means owned by no one, having no central authority or server. Altcoins are a bit different than bitcoin in this case. There are so many of them, all varying from each other. If it was possible to control crypto currencies, then China would have already taken over bitcoin.

Bitcoin is completely decentralized,no one can control or alter its codes even if satoshi wants too but we are using exchanges,wallets and other services which all are centralized so they know who were paying bitcoins to them which makes bitcoin as pseudo-anonymous.

[Abiky]

IMO it's not a myth. It's more likely people are not ready for.

Centralization creates volume, liquidity and so on. Not only on exchanges but in any market. That's why you have a middle-man in almost every business who makes centralization and then liquidity. At food markets, at crypto exchanges, at fiat currency exchanges, etc.

Platform evolves and we are witnessing more and more useful DApps. IMO DPapps are the 'true' future and I'm investing every free resources in it.

That's certainly true, mate. Considering that the world is somewhat dependent on a centralized model, many people have resorted to centralized exchanges. These same exchanges are largely dominant within the mainstream world. With unmatched liquidity and user-friendly platform, people are able to perform crypto trades without the need to worry about anything else. Of course, these centralized exchanges are prone to many risks such as hacks or theft. But most people don't seem to care about this. Even with the inception of decentralized exchanges, the centralized realm is still leading the crypto industry. This is bad since crypto was meant to overcome the middleman in the first place.

Given how big the crypto industry has grown, it's hard to be able to achieve 100% decentralization. There are too many players in the industry with a lot of power and wealth, making them hard to beat anytime soon (like Binance and Bitmain). At least, we could try our best in decentralizing the crypto realm as much as possible. The more distributed nodes there are for several cryptocurrencies on the market, the better for their decentralization. PoW-based cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum can be "solo mined" whenever it's possible in order to maintain their censorship-resistance. It's the best thing we could do at the moment in order to minimize risks of centralization as much as possible. But be aware that achieving 100% decentralization seems rather impossible at the moment.

Nonetheless, with the advent of dApps, DEXs, and even non-custodial mixing services, crypto could finally maintain its decentralized nature for years to come. There needs to be an effort from the developers, and community as a whole, in order to allow crypto to remain as is for the foreseeable future. Just my opinion