Decentralization isn't real... Philosophy & Crypto

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Decentralization isn't real. Ever heard of Plato's Theory of Forms? 🧵 Philosophy & Crypto 👇

Plato was a greek philosopher from the classical period (~400 BC). One of his most well-known ideas is the Theory of Forms. He postulated that "the physical world is not as real or true as timeless, absolute, unchangeable ideas"

These "Ideas" or "Forms" are the essences of all things. The objects we see in daily life are mere (imperfect) imitations of these essences or ideas.

You know about the idea of a circle, but the circles you have seen are imperfect implementations of the idea. For example, this might look like a perfect circle to you.

But if you look closely, nothing is perfect. Reality can never live up to the "form" or "idea".

I view Decentralization as an "Idea" or "Form". We may be able to get close to the idea of decentralization, but never perfectly decentralized. There will always be imperfections.

But we are still pretty far from decentralization. Most L1 blockchains are fairly centralized. Bitcoin is considered the most decentralized, and yet its PoW Miners are still a very small group.

Ethereum is also considered decentralized, but a large chunk of ETH is staked through just a few providers like Lido / Coinbase, and more than half of all nodes run on AWS. twitter.com/MarbiusC/status/1562512441321218048?s=20&t=agQwJhsN1Y1cLseMuzlKOw

The 3 largest stablecoins in the market (USDT, USDC, and BUSD) are centralized. The largest decentralized stablecoin (DAI) is largely backed by centralized collateral like USDC.

DAOs are meant to be decentralized organizations but nearly all of them are still highly concentrated - most are not very different from centralized entities. twitter.com/0x_illuminati/status/1548032254844100614

"An application is only as decentralized as its most centralized layer" (@alliancedao) Goldfinch & TrueFi for example are DeFi credit protocols providing undercollateralized loans, but they are still pretty far from decentralized. twitter.com/shivsakhuja/status/1558264857606111233

"True" decentralization might just be an unachievable form like Plato suggests. And we are still quite far even from "sufficient" decentralization. But the internet wasn't built in a day. Nor will its next generation. We are making incremental steps every day.

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