The promise and paradox of decentralization

The promise and paradox of decentralization
thediff.co

True decentralization is a natural but ephemeral quality of networks with relatively few nodes. That is, scales where each individual node has enough internal resources to accurately represent the entire network. Human networks are parameterized _very roughly_ by Dunbar's Number (100-250), while modern computer networks are much more capable.

As a small network scales up, decentralization becomes unnatural; nodes and links require too many resources to accurately model and communicate the network state. It becomes net energy efficient to introduce layers of dedicated networking nodes, routing protocols, and entire subnets. It is not a fluke that "Web3.0/DeFi" technologies so far are either a) tremendously inefficient or b) end up centralized.

If you want to preserve true decentralization at this scale, you need to enforce it. Prohibit centralization in any form. No more central networking/control nodes. Perhaps there are clever schemes where you can e.g. shard the entire network uniformly across its nodes, but the bottom line--the paradox--is that some central authority must decide on and enforce the sharding/decentralization policies and actively prevent centralization from emerging.

Frankly, decentralization at almost any meaningful scale in our modern global society is a myth. It's a myth tightly coupled to the American origin story and its philosophical roots in the classical liberalism of Locke et al. and Western/Reformation Christianity.

From a hard scientific perspective, it makes no sense why to sacrifice the welfare of a system for the sake of maximizing the welfare of an arbitrary component that depends on the welfare of the system. Especially when we are confronted with systemic I/O imbalances on a global scale. To arrive at the myth of decentralization, you need the ingredient of (hyper)individualist ideology.

The bigger the size of a network, the more attractive it is to abusers, while at the same time being more difficult to manage.

I think you're right in that peer-to-peer doesn't scale. I also don't think many (reasonable) individualist ideologies espouse that it does either. Individualism isn't renouncing hierarchical power structures, but rather asserting that the power rests with the hierarchy's leaves (individuals) not with the root nodes (collectives). It's the same way the west leverages a republic rather than direct democracy for it's legal system.

Or put another way, the individual leaves should be in control of the nodes higher up in the hierarchy, not visa versa. Imo, your interpretation of the debate is missing the real argument being had here. Decentralization in this a political context is saying "power should be distributed to leaf nodes as much as possible". Naturally, those leaves will still organize themselves hierarchically in the name of efficiency (ie: I'll elect this official to make decisions on my behalf because i don't have the time to contemplate every bill/law being proposed myself). But that hierarchical delegation is still a distributed/decentralized power structure as long as the people can freely re-organize into a different hierarchy or elect a new representative at will.