Some questions about decentralization.
This article responds to a user who posted some questions about decentralization that I thought I could answer. If you have an even better answer, you can answer him by following the link to the original questions, which I will leave down at the end of this article.
What is decentralization?
Decentralization, to me, is a network where many participants are involved. If one of the participants were dropped, the network would continue, and even if 90% of the participants in a network were to be brought down, only 10% could continue. Decentralization means there is not a single point of failure.
What's the reason for decentralization?
Having a network like Bitcoin Cash decentralized avoids any hostile takeover attempt by a third party or government, so the network can continue with its goal of being a peer-to-peer currency. You have to have a decentralized system to prevent hostile takeovers and prevent users from taking over the rules of such a network. In other words, it is to protect whatever idea you have and even more when it comes to digital money.
What is mining decentralization?
It only means that people are running expensive computers called miners to process Bitcoin or Bitcoin Cash transactions. It is decentralized because the miners run in different jurisdictions. A hostile entity will need to have agents worldwide and circumvent many international laws to bring a network down, violating many human rights laws simultaneously.
Bitcoin Cash has the problem that we don't have enough hashing power compared to Bitcoin. Still, those miners won't attack BCH because the miners are in the business of making money, and if in case Bitcoin fees become a problem in the future, they have a solution already in place to replace Bitcoin.
What types of decentralization exist?
Well, the only types I know are the internet itself and blockchain. I don't know of any other types of decentralization, but I am sure others could have a better answer than mine by just googling it. Since I am interested only in cryptocurrencies, I haven't searched for those terms myself. I did a simple search, and I found out that there are many types of decentralization: political, administrative, fiscal, and market decentralization. Since I am only focusing on blockchain topics, maybe the internet and blockchain will be network decentralization of something else.
And the internet itself is decentralized by incentive motivation. You can't turn off the internet without affecting other systems meaning internet takes down are rare and only last a few days. But cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and others are working on keeping the blockchain even if the internet is turned off by utilizing radio waves, satellites, and others.
I don't know everything about decentralization, but I guess this is my best answer to those questions. As always, google is your friend when it comes to knowledge.
