Don't mistake "Cryptonetworks" as being decentralized.<p>If you follow this history of previous popular open source decentralized software projects, you can see how easily a few participants can manipulate the entire ecosystem with no accountability.<p>Censorship, astroturfing, manipulative code and backdoors... negligence or malicious plausible deniability.<p>How do you hold bad actors accountable in decentralized networks?<p>Vote?<p>With money? (Hash power is simply a mask for existing capital)<p>Vote with (pseudo)anonymous accounts? ... <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sybil_attack" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sybil_attack</a><p>Vote with points earned though early adoption?<p>Vote by being on the team of developers?
That article reads like one long logical fallacy and a whole heap of handwaving.<p>It contrasts cathedral style development practices against blockchain, neatly attributing open-source, collaborative development solely to blockchain technologies.<p>The very first section makes no sense - in the <i>first</i> era of the internet, decentralised protocols allowed companies like yahoo and google to win out while centralised entities like AOL diminished? So presumably AOL rose to prominence in era zero? And everything before that was in era negative one?<p>There are so many bizarre, unevidenced claims thrown in... This is pure evangelism.
"In cryptonetworks, these decisions are made by the community, using open and transparent mechanisms."<p>Or maybe, depending on the coin, through infighting among insiders and forking. There is apparently no guarantee of transparency or good governance.
I think no one disagrees on "why" of the decentralization. Too big to fail is a problem.<p>The real question is "how to decentralize?". How will disputes be solved in a decentralized economy? Many of the answers hover around - well, the code and game theory will take care of it.<p>And that IMO, shows a weak understanding of human nature. Nature is unpredictable, people will find a way to overt a decentralized economy while playing within rules.<p>A good example is mining. The manipulation of Status ICO by F2Pool:<p><a href="https://steemit.com/ethereum/@dhumphrey/f2pool-manipulates-usd1-2-million-on-the-ethereum-blockchain-during-the-status-im-ico" rel="nofollow">https://steemit.com/ethereum/@dhumphrey/f2pool-manipulates-u...</a><p>They had only 25% ie less than 51% of hashing power but were still able to avert network rules.
I think decentralization has already "won the hearts and minds of developers." the question is, will it win the hearts and minds of consumers.