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RE: Making sense of STEEM, Steemit and Steemit Inc

in #steem8 years ago

The point about the STEEM blockchain (as with other blockchains) is it is not centrally controlled

My understanding of "Steem is not decentralized" claim is the fact that Steemit inc have big enough stake to "appoint" or "dismiss" witnesses if they want to.

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That's difference in what we mean by decentralised. I'd call that an issue of STEEM tokens being concentrated in the hands of a few.

  • Does Steemit Inc have a big enough 'stake' to effective control the governance of STEEM? Yes.
  • If Steemit Inc relinquishes this, does this mean that there will be less concentration. Not necessarily. It's likely that another individual/ group will hoard the majority of coins.

However this is an inherit issue of blockchains and consensus. Anyone with enough hash-power can dictate the direction of Bitcoin, e.g. whether it hardforks with Unlimited or goes down the Segwit route.

If we deem STEEM as being 'centralised' because of this. All blockchain suffer the same systemic risk.

At least with STEEM there is some degree of transparency surrounding the players involved. And those determining governance are actual token holders and have skin in the game, as it were.

However this is an inherit issue of blockchains and consensus. Anyone with enough hash-power can dictate the direction of Bitcoin, e.g. whether it hardforks with Unlimited or goes down the Segwit route.

That's not strictly true, though. All the hashpower in the world won't let you push a 2MB block through a Bitcoin Core p2p node. They are fully validating consensus nodes.

There's no way to force people to upgrade their software, no matter how many supercomputers or how much stake you have.

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