Are Blockchain platforms like Steemit truly Decentralised?
We live in an era which has seen the beginning and rise of digital technologies. The internet has given power to everyone for setting up a business online. We have people creating content, selling goods and services on the internet.
With the boon in Blockchain technologies, there is a paradigm shift from creating the business to creating the organization for equal distribution of wealth and removing the centralised authority.
If you try reading the whitepaper of few companies like Steem,APPICS, BAT or Sapien.network, you will surely find one thing in common "centralised companies like facebook and google sells your data and create money out it".
Steemit has attracted half a million of user selling the idea of complete decentralization and what you create you earn. But looking closely how this platform is working I sometimes question is this what is known as complete decentralisation? Is this really a thing of the future? Aren't we taking the decentralisation concept back to the old model of centralisation?
Why do I think so?
Wikipedia describes decentralisation as-
Decentralization is the process of distributing or dispersing functions, powers, people or things away from a central location or authority.[1][2] While centralization, especially in the governmental sphere, is widely studied and practiced, there is no common definition or understanding of decentralization. The meaning of decentralization may vary in part because of the different ways it is applied.
Distribution of power, function and things away from central authority is called decentralisation.
Does distribution of power to a handful of people mining block means decentralization? Isn't that just breaking centralization to a small group of centralized authority?
When someone depends on some authority for the changes, money or laws isn't that centralisation?
Bitcoin is the first decentralized crypto-currency, which apparently have opened the floodgates for currencies that could remove central banks. We still feel blockchain could disrupt and change how old technologies work. But does that change means shifting the authority of central bankers to central miners?
When Bitcoin technology was needed to be upgraded to beat the competition we saw a lot of hard forks just because of inequality and miners disagreement.
If we give someone the power to choose the whats best for us just because they have money/equipment/power(hash rate) to decide what is suitable for us. Isn't that becomes very similar to the centralised system?
STEEMIT and INEQUALITY
On Facebook and Instagram, in order to gain the audience and earn money from your business, you need to pay them money to promote your content i.e you are filling facebook's pocket for making money.
We are doing very similar to what we were doing on FB. We using bid-bots here to promote the posts to earn money.
Just that it isn't helping with Steemit with revenue to increase the reward pool or for further development of the platform, rather money is going to some individual pockets.
To change the laws or change features, we are solely dependent on witnesses. I know we could choose our witnesses but what who are witnessing the witness, we aren't right?
We don't have advertisement running through the platform right now, what if in future we have ads running and similar bots that are upvoting right now, could track the mentions for related advertisement and publish some ads taking money. It will be very similar to what Google is doing right now by crawling websites and using Adsense.
Till we have equality, we could not hope for Decentralisation. The platforms we are creating are all about pseudo-decentralised. The moment they have miners, witnesses and investors, who could abuse the platform in their favour, the idea of decentralisation dies.
People might say, still, its decentralised and you are earning through it. I haven't given much time to FB, for creating content the way I'm putting effort on steemit. It was only a social network, not a blogging website. Still, we have many websites, success stories that exist on the internet just because of FB. Many memes website, media companies emerged because of FB as they were consistently posting things on their profile which game them a brand name.
Conclusion
When one says blockchain is going to disrupt major .com companies, I think first we need to closely look at the way so-called decentralised platforms are working. How people's greed is still trying to take the system back to centralisation.
I think its the inequality which will take away decentralisation dream and kill the future platforms. Like steem, we could have people buying more power and could have more influence than everyone else. That makes the platform biased towards someone, which could give birth to inequality hence centralisation. The power of witnesses and miners is just another story.
There may be people who could say "Dude, you are jealous of their earning?" but the baseline of the story is "Why you were jealous when Mark Zuckerberg was earning because of you? "
The solution to the problem may be making everyone a witness like what IOTA is planning to do. Or not letting someone in power for a longer period of time. Like the largest democracy, America follows two-time rules, maybe designing the algorithm in the similar fashion could help maintaining some kind of equality.
I know it hard to maintain proper decentralisation, we have seen people trying something similar in platforms like DASH and CARDANO but the people with large stakes are still the winner.
Image Sources- PIXABAY.COM
This is an excellent, well-crafted argument, and I agree with you. I used to be a worker-owner at a collectively run restaurant. There, each member was a stakeholder with an equal say in how the business was run. Certain decisions were made on committees, but all major decisions had to be consensus. It had its weak points too, but I am just bringing it up to share it as an example of decentralization within a system. I agree that Steemit does not give that kind of power to all its members, and your point about term limits is very interesting too. I am starting to secretly hope that all this thought you are putting into these comparisons will lead to some kind of amazing solution in the future . I really appreciate the work you put into your posts. Thanks for sharing.
hey @dflo,
Thank you for reading the post and commenting.
I am trying to understand how will decentralised system work in future and my post are the by-products of the thoughts I have.
I should have had written about the flip side of the coin as well- the power of taking initiatives and volunteerism on the decentralised platforms. On a decentralised platform, if every content creator content starts taking himself as an investor too, they could start working and volunteering for the growth of this platform. But the thing is most of the people don't care about the platform, they produce content and do the minimal required to become successful steemian... and there are very few trying and working hard for making steem successful leading to centralisation.
Wow. Intelligent and well written. I love the term "pseudo-decentralized" that you use. I honestly agree. It's not a decentralization of power, wealth or technology, it's only a power shift - and scarily, it's a race now to get some of that power (or wealth).
Additionally, bots and anything on Steemit allowing for the exchange of voting should be banned otherwise it will gradually kill off the excitement surrounding this platform. However it's unlikely anything will be done because people are profiting from the current system. IMO.
Hey @fulltiltcrypto,
Thanks for visiting my blog and many thanks for comment bro.
Yeah I fill complete decentralisation is a myth. People need leaders to follow, there will always be some amount of accumulation of wealth and power into the hand of some individual, leading to centralisation.
Bots need to be killed, not only they are becoming a medium of earning for whales and dolphins but it is taking away the essential SP that was needed to be allocated/invested in new and worthy projects of this blockchain leading to not my investors and creating loopholes.
It's like you're reading my mind. Followed and upvoted for what it's worth. Take care.
Very good points. We all love steemit but there are some flaws. Someone could buy a bunch and basically take over if they wanted. At least this blockchain is getting tested in the real world. Nice post brotha.
I am tired of bitching about this platform lol .... yeah they could do that and have influence than everyone less. I think that's the reason we come across heajin brnie sander drama, just cause of concentration of power in rocherlaxo hands.
True it's been tested in the real world and people are liking the concept, but for making it a success every one of us needs to volunteer and take some kind of leadership role small or big !!
Everyone here agrees, this is a very intelligent post and you have listed very good arguments. I'm in no way a tech or blockchain expert but I do know what decentralization means. And you were able to express articulately what I have been observing - the greed of some people and hoarding all the power is just another form of centralization.
I still hope for the best as we are still in the early days of Steemit. I hope that those who hold the power do something about it.
Yeah, I think, we need to unite and volunteer to make this platform better. I tried asking few question on yesterdays witness panel radio by @aggroed, like "Is anyone keeping a track of suggestion/difficulty faced by a user, why they are fixing promotion tab and how could minnow help?"
I was amused by the fact that most people didn't know the answers, no one keeping a track of suggestions and difficulties plus they didn't have any clue why they not fixing promotion tab... if we are adding some content, contributing time we need to know the answer, and as an investor of time/money/content we need to get things fixed. This could only happen we unite and stand together.
I sometimes feel starting a community lol, but I have very less repo right now haha...
Hey you can start a community! Who said you cant? I'll support you in this idea! :D
The truth of the matter is that another interesting publication is that these questions of analysis about whether or not Steemit is following the decentralization pattern is extremely beneficial, since many of us who strive to give value to this platform by providing original and quality content, often do not see ourselves rewarded in an equitable manner and remain stable at some point thanks to our perseverance and work, but what today is a blog should transcend a lot more with improvements and where there can be adjustments in true equity, it is difficult to achieve but it is also very possible to succeed in your search.