> Consider the average "big block chain" - very high block frequency, very high block size, many thousands of transactions per second, but also highly centralized: because the blocks are so big, only a few dozen or few hundred nodes can afford to run a fully participating node that can create blocks or verify the existing chain.
He lost me in the first paragraph. Does "highly centralized" mean a "few hundred nodes" to you?
When it comes to decentralization, is more always better? Naively, it feels like there's a threshold of decentralization that it's valuable to cross, but beyond which other problems are more worthy of allocating scarce resources towards solving.
So, what is that threshold? or more aptly, what is the purpose that decentralization serves and how can we tell that it's satisfied?
Or is decentralization really an end in and of itself? If so, can someone explain to the unenlightened why?
>Does "highly centralized" mean a "few hundred nodes" to you?
Yes and no. I think the important part here is that running a node on these networks is prohibitively expensive (costing thousands of dollars per month). The problem isn't really the number of nodes, but the barrier of entry in becoming a node.
He lost me in the first paragraph. Does "highly centralized" mean a "few hundred nodes" to you?
When it comes to decentralization, is more always better? Naively, it feels like there's a threshold of decentralization that it's valuable to cross, but beyond which other problems are more worthy of allocating scarce resources towards solving.
So, what is that threshold? or more aptly, what is the purpose that decentralization serves and how can we tell that it's satisfied?
Or is decentralization really an end in and of itself? If so, can someone explain to the unenlightened why?