The “blockchain” in the wave has become a business opportunity for the development of high-tech industries in the future. With the arrival of the blockchain 3.0 era, how should this technology be integrated into people’s life scenes? Achieving widespread application has become the key to everyone’s discussion. Among them, “decentralization” is considered to be the core of this technology.
So, what is “decentralization” in the true sense?
1. What is decentralization?
Let’s interpret it literally. The meaning of “decentralization” is easy to understand. For example, if you rent a house now, you need to go through an intermediary to find a suitable house. The relationship between landlords and tenants revolves around the “intermediary”. “Decentralization” means that there is no housing agency, and landlords and tenants can sign rental contracts.
But from the perspective of blockchain technology, it is not just about removing a center, but what kind of value can be achieved by removing this center? This is closely related to its technical architecture.
In February 2017, Ethereum founder Buterin elaborated on the meaning of decentralization in the article “The meaning of decentralization”. He believed that decentralization can be interpreted from three aspects, namely architecture, governance and logic.
From an architectural point of view, “centralization” means that the system can continue to operate no matter how many nodes it accepts; from a governance point of view, “centralization” means that many individuals and organizations need to control the system; and from a logical point of view, “centralization” “Refers to whether the interface and data presented by the system are a single whole?
After understanding “centralization” from these three perspectives, let’s look at the “decentralization” of blockchain technology. Conceptually, in the simplest terms, the blockchain is a unified ledger for the entire network, so logically speaking, the interface and data of the system are a single whole, which is centralized.
However, from an architectural perspective, the blockchain is a peer-to-peer network and is completely decentralized; from a governance perspective, the blockchain operates the entire system based on a consensus algorithm, making it difficult for a few people to control this The system, therefore, is also decentralized in governance.
2. What are the advantages of decentralization?
Decentralization in architecture and decentralization in governance can bring three major advantages to the blockchain: fault tolerance, attack resistance, and collusion prevention.
1. Fault tolerance
We know that if a computer system has a problem, it needs constant repairs to maintain the overall operation. In the blockchain system, it is a decentralized architecture, which means that problems in any network will not affect other networks. This is fault tolerance.
2. Resistance to aggression
If a system has only one center, it is very easy to be attacked. However, the blockchain operates in a distributed manner, in other words, it is multi-centered, which can effectively improve the resistance to attacks.
3. Prevent collusion
As mentioned earlier, the consensus algorithm makes it impossible for a few people to control the system. The current Internet is precisely because it is too centralized, allowing industry giants to seize the entire market, and some trust crises continue to occur.
Decentralization is the most fundamental feature of blockchain. If you want to be truly applicable to blockchain application scenarios, you must consider it from the perspective of decentralization.
