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Comment by ibgib | Hacker News Reader

> protocol designers to fine-tune incentives and punishments

This is an interesting phrasing of one of the questions I have about the "decentralized" aspect of cryptocurrencies. I get that the context of the term is that it attempts to bypass the centralization of a fiat currency. But isn't it still centralized to those who develop the protocol itself?

Or is the agreement of the community a requirement of the protocol?

My heuristic seems to be that the precise protocol implementation decisions are analogous to the precise laws enacted by the centralized governments who provide the value behind mainstream fiat currencies.

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- is the agreement of the community a requirement of the protocol?

Yes. Always with a choice of creating your own rules and convincing other to switch to them.

Decentralization in this context would mean different rules for every participant, which is not something that we want - an extreme example of individualism where everyone has different beliefs, so a group cannot accomplish anything.

You and the other commenter both quoted the same aspect about agreement of the community, so see my other response.

> Decentralization in this context would mean different rules for every participant, which is not something that we want - an extreme example of individualism where everyone has different beliefs, so a group cannot accomplish anything.

That is quite interesting, thinking of extreme individualism. But in thinking about that, isn't that what the entire ecosystem of cryptocurrencies is currently doing, and any one particular cryptocurrency itself is a point of centralization?

Again, I'm just tugging at a thread here, trying to understand how it's supposed to be even conceptually possible to be "decentralized". It just seems to me that we are talking about a different form of centralization - which may be a good thing! Possibly centralization of choice, as opposed to centralization with regards to physical location (i.e. which country you live in).

> Or is the agreement of the community a requirement of the protocol?

It is, obviously, because if there's no agreement, then nobody (or not enough people to matter) adopt said protocol.

Yes, I instinctively agree with you. But what about sink investments? Also, what about borderline protocol implementation improvements? Death of a thousand papercuts...that kind of thing?

Does keeping the algorithm source in the open, which allows for forks when opportunity presents itself...is that pretty much the optimal strategy against any transaction protocol being abused?

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