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Ask HN: When is federation a better solution than decentralization?

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Re: Ask HN: When is federation a better solution than decentralization?

#31

Post by nathcd »

hxchen wrote: post #5

I agree with you on that hybrid would be a more sustainable solution. I want to highlight a technical perspective. That’s the scalability issue of Blockchain. Fully decentralization cannot afford scalability, just as we cannot afford referendum on every polical proposal. In fact, many technical solutions to scale the Blockchain are using the same principle of your idea of federation.

> That’s the scalability issue of Blockchain. Fully decentralization cannot afford scalability, just as we cannot afford referendum on every polical proposal.

What you're talking about here is decentralized consensus, which is very different than just decentralization. Regular old decentralization -- a la Secure Scuttlebutt -- has no such scaling issues.

Re: Ask HN: When is federation a better solution than decentralization?

#32

Post by bitCromwell »

"As long as we live in a world where fiat currency and nation states dominate transactional and regulatory environments"

Do you think that world will ever end? What will that look like? Will the very, very early stages look something like this?

Cryptocurrencies were not developed as a get rich scheme, nor as a tool for energy efficiency, corporate profits nor so many of the rubrics we use to judge them today.

The idealists that authored the crypto world imagined replacing the fiats of current rulers. Considering how rare a thing that is in history their early, chaotic form of decentralization isn't doing so badly judged on its own merits.

Re: Ask HN: When is federation a better solution than decentralization?

#34

Post by Presquare »

kruhft wrote: post #10

Check out Curtis Yarvin's work on this, he problably solved it in an interesting way with how he's configured the current Urbit node system.

Urbit is interesting for me in how I first couldn't understand its purpose at all. Since then, I have had several cases of pondering on some difficult problem, only to find myself thinking, "...isn't this what Urbit is attempting to be a (partial) solution to?"

Re: Ask HN: When is federation a better solution than decentralization?

#35

Post by kuschku »

y_molodtsov wrote: post #26
kuschku wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but moxie is mostly wrong. He's only seen worst-case scenarios and assumes everything is lile that, so he builds his centralized stuff instead. You can easily move forward with a federated protocol as well if you've got cooperating people, guarantee only 6 months of support for a protocol version, and have a versioning and feature flag system. Hell in one project I contribute to we've kept protocol compatibilit…

And how many consumer users does that project have? Federated clients lost.

So you're saying that the only reason Facebook messenger with thousands of deva and a multi billion ad budget won against XMPP was that XMPP was federated?

No. The reason federated clients lost was that mega corporations can't make profit with em, and so they spent billions on their own tech.

This isn't david vs goliath, this is david vs a nuclear aircraft carrier

Re: Ask HN: When is federation a better solution than decentralization?

#36

Post by smilesnd »

imbokodo wrote: post #25

The US Treasury department says trading in Petro cryptocoins would violate US sanctions against Venezuela. So Bitfinex will not trade in it. Coinmarketcap.com lists over 1500 cryptocoins, but not the Petro. This sort of things shows up the myth of decentralization. Only one cryptocoin with elements of decentralization has been truly challenged, and has basically collapsed under US government pressure. It shows "decen…

Their is a difference when a hacker/coder creates a cryptocurrency and a government creates one. I do agree with you the weakness of cryptocurrency now a days is it relies on exchanges that need approval from banks/governments to do business. Gone the days when crypto fans would meet in dark alley ways to exchange cash for coin.

Re: Ask HN: When is federation a better solution than decentralization?

#37

Post by mythrwy »

imbokodo wrote: post #25

The US Treasury department says trading in Petro cryptocoins would violate US sanctions against Venezuela. So Bitfinex will not trade in it. Coinmarketcap.com lists over 1500 cryptocoins, but not the Petro. This sort of things shows up the myth of decentralization. Only one cryptocoin with elements of decentralization has been truly challenged, and has basically collapsed under US government pressure. It shows "decen…

The other thing people sometimes overlook is the infrastructure these schemes depend upon.

Control of the wires means a lot. Sure you can always sneak under to radar to some extent but the mass cannot and that probably won't change.

Re: Ask HN: When is federation a better solution than decentralization?

#38

Post by endymi0n »

Here's the core of the problem and also why most of crypto / blockchain technology will go down the drain soon:

Decentralization isn't a business model. The opposite is.

That's it. How you get to any competitive edge in a market is: 1) Be better than your competitors in a field. 2) Own that field and displace everyone else. 3) Extract value.

The Crypto hype happened because a super elegant technical solution (-> Blockchain) that nobody really understands was (and IMHO still is) waiting for a problem met a visionary hippie fantasy of a world of inefficient, evil companies that somehow will be made better by some form of decentralization.

The problem is: There wasn't ever an inefficiency and none of those "huge" competitors has any incentive to leave their market share to someone else. So exactly nothing will happen.

Crypto is nothing more than modern white knight fantasy - in reality all the purpopoted benefits of a blockchain are serious shortcomings. Do you really want a payment that can't be rolled back by a centralized authority because you were defrauded or someone hacked your account? Do you want any kind of accounts for a whole tech-afraid populace that they can't access anymore once they've lost their key?

Most people haven't realized that the current centralization and trust in some large companies and institutions is actually a pretty deep local optimum that will be incredibly hard to displace with something better.

Re: Ask HN: When is federation a better solution than decentralization?

#39

Post by mabbo »

woah wrote: post #20
mabbo wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certificate authorities seems to follow the same pattern. I wonder if we might see a crytocurrency someday follow that same pattern: the chain is decentralized and public, but the miners are each replaced by authorities that a user can choose to accept (or not). The downside to this would be disagreements over who actually owns what. You'd only be able to make a transaction if both the buyer and seller agree on who o…

There are many chains like this

Really? Do tell, I'm quite interested!

Re: Ask HN: When is federation a better solution than decentralization?

#40

Post by jhasse »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #17
kuschku wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but moxie is mostly wrong. He's only seen worst-case scenarios and assumes everything is lile that, so he builds his centralized stuff instead. You can easily move forward with a federated protocol as well if you've got cooperating people, guarantee only 6 months of support for a protocol version, and have a versioning and feature flag system. Hell in one project I contribute to we've kept protocol compatibilit…

If he's wrong and it's easy, why can no one do it? Why did Slack overrun IRC? XMPP left by the wayside by Google and Facebook? Because it isn't easy, and users will always value the experience over compatibility and principal.

> Why did Slack overrun IRC?

Hm ... does IRC count as federated?

> XMPP left by the wayside by Google and Facebook?

Google and Facebook want to lock you into their ecosystem, that's why they dropped federation.

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