Eugen RochkoHm, I actually don't know if there's a word for it, but I was talking about blockchains with someone, and one of my points is that the blockchain is decentralized, but also kind of isn't, in the sense that there is only one ledger that everyone shares. This as a counterpoint to a federated system like Mastodon, where every server can exist independently of others. Is there a word for this?
Actually maybe my issue is that I consider "distributed" to be a subset of "decentralized", when maybe they are separate properties, in which case you could say the blockchain is distributed but centralized..?
Lord Guysbert de Fieri 
@Gargron Ah! I would say it is the reverse: decentralized is a subset of distributed.
watchtheriver@Gargron The term decentralized is used for block chains because while there is consensus there is no single centralized authority and the system falls down without distributed consensus and potentially suffers when compute power of the system is too centralized, with distributed systems like federated chat , there may not be strict ordering across all systems, there are usually central authorities, perhaps ( likely ) sharded ( using distributed stores like couchbase or memcache + persistence
@Not sure the #blockchain necessarily is (must be?) centralised in all possible implementations.
Strypey@ZeniorXV @Gargron side note; can we all please get into the habit of saying #blockchains, not "the blockchain"? The latter can tend to confuse newbies into thinking there's only one blockchain, and that all blockchain startups are using it, the same way there's only one internet, and all internet startups are using it.
Yuval Marcus@Gargron Wait, are you saying that a blockchain is centralized because there is only one ledger? How is that centralized? There is not one authority that can append to the blockchain. The blockchain is supposed to be the same ledger shared across many machines. We say that cryptocurrencies are decentralized because in theory there is not one central authority that "mines" and secures the network (that anyone can join and help mine)--of course this is not fully accurate: http://hackingdistributed.com/2018/01/15/decentralization-bitcoin-ethereum/
@Gargron I may have found an answer to the dilemma. We can say that Bitcoin and similar cryptocurrencies are decentralized but that they're conceptually centralized around a global singleton. Ie. the concept of a Blockchain. So the system is decentralized in that not one person controls authority but it's centralized around a common concept (the global singleton). This makes sense for the purpose of Bitcoin but maybe not for social networks.
See Network Topology section: https://www.scuttlebutt.nz/concepts/
Edward L Platt@Gargron Your usage is consistent with Paul Baran's original descriptions of "decentralized" and "distributed".
What you're getting at is that the system for maintaining the ledger is decentralized, while the system for interpreting the ledger (associating a token with a public key) is centralized.
chromakey@Gargron that's accurate. Blockchains are decentralized in that there's a single source of truth, but distributed in the sense that the source lives in many places
@Gargron sorry that should say centralized
SunDancer@Gargron
Blockchains are cloned maybe?
Blockchains are cloned maybe?
maho@Gargron Wouldn't "centralized" imply that there is one single point of failure which can be taken out? How does a (healthy) blockchain fit that description?
INACTIVE@Gargron Word for what, specifically? Your example of the blockchain?
@deadsuperhero The centrality of the blockchain. Like I'm almost willing to say it's centralized..? But distributed? This is weird. It's like a new axis I don't have a word for.
Rysiekúr (old account)@Gargron @deadsuperhero things can be centralized on one level, decentralized on the other, and federated on yet another.
Facebook is centralized on the interface, organizational, and policy levels (among many others), but has a decentralized infrastructure spanning a number of datacenters and uses protocols designed to be decentralized.
@Gargron @deadsuperhero fun thing to consider is how centralized BitCoin is (almost all processing power is controlled by a small number of immense processing pools). This means it doesn't really matter if the underlying technology is decentralized or not, since the *power* over it is centralized.
I guess I like your distinction between decentralized and distributed.
Fidel Ramos@rysiek @Gargron @deadsuperhero An important part of decentralization is that new nodes can join without asking for permission to anybody.
@Gargron Distributed versus decentralized might be what you're looking for.
Sean R. Lynch ☑️@Gargron @deadsuperhero Monolithic, maybe. Blockchains are a class of distributed *consensus* algorithms, so it doesn't really make sense to say they're actually centralized because they are all agreeing to one thing when the whole point of blockchain is that it's a new way to do precisely that.
@Gargron "Decentralized" is too general a term to be sufficiently descriptive for most purposes. P2P and federation are two ways to achieve decentralization but they are very different in how they work. P2P networks often seek to avoid partitions by merging them as soon as one node can see both sides. Does that property make them actually centralized?
Alexandre Olivait's a distributed protocol to reach potentially decentralized consensus, the key distinguishing property being consensus. federated social media seldom require this sort of consensus on past events
josef@Gargron i'm not sure about the best word for the counterpoint, but think the term in the blockchain world for a federated-type system is "sharding", mainly in the context of "oh god, how can we make this scale at all"
Xerz 💗 [UNMOVED]@Gargron Isn't that just called a distributed ledger?
@Gargron One is a pub / sub model with a persistence model that is likely K/V store, the other is a proof of work (and I believe) merkle tree backed store which can be sparse. In fact depending on internal decisions both can have sparse representations for some nodes
Duane Johnson@Gargron Political vs Architectural Decentralization? https://medium.com/@VitalikButerin/the-meaning-of-decentralization-a0c92b76a274
val@Gargron There are works to have "sidechains" that commit to a main blockchain (eg. Ethereum) from time to time.
cj 🇺🇸🇨🇭@Gargron I just say "distributed centralization" and let the paradox sink in.
Rotating Skull@Gargron Whatever this word is, it also describes the DNS system right?
@rotatingskull Yes, I think
@Gargron Okay. So perhaps an important difference is that in, say, the DNS system, the center of the hub (the borg queen, heh) can be shut down temporarily and the collectice will continue to function fine for a while. But the queen must eventually be replaced or the system can’t grow or change at all.
Whereas with Masto, if your fork disappears, other forks could take over as with Linux and most FOSS projects.
So the software is fungible but the user list is essential.
@Gargron Email is in effect no different because it relies on the DNS too. In fact perhaps the only truly decentralized system is managing your own IP address to names list like in the old, old days.
Except that system still relies on IP addresses.
So then where this conversation leads is to mesh networks being the only truly decentralied system. (I am not advocating for mesh networks and I barely understand them). But that’s where this logic goes right?
@rotatingskull I'm not sure it's meaningful to go down to transport layers when talking about "business logic" layers. Like, as someone else in the thread already mentioned, facebook has thousands of servers powering itself. But we wouldn't call that distributed or decentralized in *this* context
@Gargron Okay. Good point. So then perhaps the deeper question is not how many computers are there and where are they physicall located, and instead, who is controlling the most important computers?
In the case of the DNS it’s supposedly an international consortium accountable to many people worldwide, which makes DNS decentralized even though there is one master list that the system needs to function.
@Gargron Perhaps in any human system (library, networked computers, government) there is a most important node. The question may then be: Whom does that node serve?
@Gargron Here’s another question. Would a decentralized network of fascists be an acceptable result of this Mastodon project to you? (I think it would not be). So then your (our?) real goal here is a bit more complicated than simply decentralization. Decentralization is a means to an end. What is the end? #teleology
Henry Edward HardyStraw man argument much?
@hhardy01 Um, no. I don’t see how this comment has anything to do with the concept of a strawman in discourse.
Let's try again, shall we?
You appear to be making a straw man argument and engaging in whataboutism--tu quoque--namely, "what about if fascists made a decentralized network."
But you understood me perfectly well the first time didn't you?
@hhardy01 Yes, but what you’re describing is not a strawman. A strawman is not asking a question about possible contingencies. A strawman is a very different thing.
@hhardy01 Imagining possible worlds is a huge part of philosophy, the field that invented the idea of a strawman. Strawmanning is a very different, bad faith practice.
@hhardy01 I will not bore you with the details as they are easily available. I suggest you read about strawmen in rhetoric at your leisure. Thank you.
Jim Newsome@Gargron haven't been following blockchains super closely, but aren't they federated in the sense that anyone can start their own blockchain, using existing algorithms and software? E.g. didn't ethereum fork?
@sporksmith If you extend the definition of federation that much then Facebook federates with Twitter (which it doesn't) just because they share common concepts. Federation implies interoperability.
@Gargron
My thinking is that afaik it would be fairly trivial to take open source e.g. Bitcoin software, change a couple parameters, and create 'sporkcoin' or whatever. But yeah, good point that they wouldn't interoperate in any meaningful way. Thanks for the clarification!
My thinking is that afaik it would be fairly trivial to take open source e.g. Bitcoin software, change a couple parameters, and create 'sporkcoin' or whatever. But yeah, good point that they wouldn't interoperate in any meaningful way. Thanks for the clarification!
S18alg@Gargron You can say that blockchain is decentralised until some actor manage to get 50% of the network. Which can be done with only money.
(I am now trying to think about a situation where someone pays me to be on his mastodon instances)
Sam the Octopus@Gargron "distributed silo"?
kae, by the ocean@Gargron the fediverse still is "one" ledger, no? It's just that most instances only care about a small part of that ledger.
The difference being that in the blockchain, having the whole ledger is the point (and mostly necessary).
@k In the fediverse each server is its own ledger though, because it has 100% control over itself. And then the ledgers can intersect in various ways.
UnaOculusAperta@Gargron Autonomy, autonomous. 😎
David Gordon@Gargron consensus
rainulf@Gargron Internet?
Nate@Gargron
I've always thought of a blockchain as a global ledger, since the word "global" suggests that there is only one "central" ledger which is distributed in terms of ownership.
I've always thought of a blockchain as a global ledger, since the word "global" suggests that there is only one "central" ledger which is distributed in terms of ownership.