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Comment by somdax | Hacker News Reader

About Decentralized Systems. What are some those that you know about that are being used and can be considered a mature and proven decentralized system? (However you want to defineature and proven)

Is the collection of governments around the world an example of a decentralized system?

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none of them. decentralization (like centralization) is a tendency to an asymptotic pole, not a category a given system can either be in or out of. to put it another way, decentralization exists, but decentralized does not, except as an abstract ideal.

it may be that decentralization doesn't exist at all in its own right, but is best understood as a temporary phase between centralizing regimes.

The internet.

The Internet has some decentralization. But it’s not decentralized. At all.

Most of the services you use on the internet are centralized, but the internet itself isn't. Anyone can host a server anyone else can theoretically access so long as there is a path along which to connect and the user knows the address. Portions of the internet's infrastructure can be cut off from the rest by a sufficiently powerful entity, and most people use the same few DNS servers, but no one controls the whole thing. Internet 1.0 is still running under the surface.

what again is the central authority of the internet?

It’s not a dichotomy, there are a few authorities.

touché. Right on my face.

So that helps answer what I was thinking. There can definitely be a way to have a decentralized system to which it's actors have their actions regulated by a judicial system.

Thanks!

>What are some those that you know about that are being used and can be considered a mature and proven decentralized system?

bittorrent

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