Is Steemit Truly Decentralized ?
Source
Lately, I have been questioning the concept of decentralization of Steemit. Yes, we all know it is based on blockchain technology. That it in itself does not mean it is decentralized. My understanding of decentralization is no single entity, be it a person or group of people can decide how network works. It must be based on consensus of the community, probably in Steem case it would be the stakeholders.
I am questioning decentralization for the following reasons:
There has been 18 or 19 hardforks within a year period time. In crypto world hardfork is a big deal and necessitates a community consensus, therefore it is not an easy matter to accomplish. That makes me think who is making these decisions? It can only be possible with small group of people, which would mean there is a centralized decision making body.
Who does really maintain Steemit website? There are so many things seem to remind us the early 2000s website, how are we going to improve it so it is more user friendly. Search feature is absolute a joke. How can community put a voice in these matter to get things better. What is the mechanism? or is it again upto small group of people who make these decisions?
Whitepaper is completely outdated. After so many forks, much has changes. Some smart guys like @jerrybanfield did a research and came up with a post listing the real state of thing. That was helpful. But how are we really suppose to get the true and factual information? What entity is in charge of it?
If it was truly decentralized wouldn't community have a voice in decision makings for the changes? I don't see a mechanism to do that. I admit I don't understand everything, but I have read quite a few posts by leaders of the community with large stakes to understand. Yet there are still so many unanswered questions.
Although, witnesses are crucial part of the network, I don't believe it is within their functions to do the decision for the future changes on the platform. Correct me if I am wrong.
What I propose:
I hope a this post will get catch an attention of a whale, would pursue certain actions to pursue a true decentralization or at least clarification of the level of decentralization of STEEM platform. I realize I have low stake in the community, and what I say might mean not much, but at the same time I believe many would agree with me.
We should build a mechanism that will facilitate democratization of the network, meaning everybody would have a vote based on their stakes in the network. This mechanism would allow members to vote for future actions, be it hardforks, softforks, any other kinds of changes. I would think that would lead to true decentralization.
Another mechanism needed is to ability to raise the possible issues and needed changes, that may require whale sponsorship to push forward for community discussion, again mechanism of voting can contribute for the consensus needed to achieve certain goals.
In conclusion, if if the network is not decentralized and decision making is only upto small group of people in the leadership of @ned and @dan I think this should be clarified. I would really like to know, in my opinion every member has a right to know, because we all are putting stakes in various levels in this network and these matter should be as clear as possible.
I would accept explanations in this matter. Please correct me if I am wrong or add if I missed something that might be of importance in the matter of decentralization of the platform.
I would really appreciate sponsorship of whales and dolphins to push this matter forward if you deem this is important. If there are any whale or dolphin sponsors to push this matter, I would ask to rewrite this topic in a manner that would be more accurate to address the issues and understandable for all. Because I believe, my understanding of this might be flawed. I just am not able to gather sufficient information, because it is not easy to find.
Thank You.
To add to what neoxian has pointed out, Steemit.com is not decentralized; Steem is. There are other frontends like busy.org, chainbb, eSteem which use the Steem blockchain.
Steemit.com is run by Steemit Inc, the founding developers of Steem.
thanks for the info, really helps to understand. I guess this works for now, but makes me wonder what true decentralization would look like. So far I am more convinced that the future of the platform relies on few hands rather than the community as a whole. At the same time I also believe we are in the good hands.
In any free society, there'll always be inequality. There'll always be a few people who stand up for the community as a whole. So I guess this is a damn good representation of what true decentralization looks like.
I am not saying there is bad representation at all. Please take this as an attempt to understand true nature of steem network. At the same, coming from economics and political science background, I do believe decentralization can be in a better form than it currently is. In a current form if it resembles governmental structure it would indeed be classified as more of a centralized form with stakeholder having checks and balance on them.
On a side note, I have been paying more attention to this because of the nerd wars going on in bitcoin which was suppose to be the pioneer in decentralization, and which will be facing a test of survival soon. I think it will represent a lesson for all of the crypto world to draw conclusions from.
Thank you for sharing your knowledge, I truly appreciate it.
You're wrong. The top 20 witnesses do decide which code to run, and they are stake voted on by the rest of the users in the system.
I apologize for my ignorance, but how does the voting take place?
You can vote here: https://steemit.com/~witnesses
You have 30 votes, choose wisely.
So basically we vote for witnesses, and witnesses decide what happens? However the stakeholders don't have a direct say in the changes? Just like we vote people for parliament and parliament makes laws?
Yea, that sums it up. This is Delegated Proof of Stake. The top 20 witnesses are receiving the most votes by those with stake (who bother to vote). If there is a witness that is doing something bad for the system, they can be quickly unvoted by those who have the most to lose.
You should vote for witnesses that have policies you agree with.
that clarifies a lot of things. thank you @neoxian. couple more questions. Do the witnesses have their policies in their blogs? and do the witnesses communicate with each other on regular basis to pursue changes and solve problems?
Yes to both for the most part.
Thanks, this was the conversation that was needed. There are plenty of witnesses waiting to move up. If you wish to see changes, convince some of the witnesses and then vote for them so that they may be able to implement those changes.
Firstly, however, try to find out if your desired changes are at the blockchain level or merely the User Interface, such as Steemit or chainBB.
@deserttree great that you pose these question and great that @neoxian was so helpful. I also got many anwers to questions I had too but never asked. Thanks again - great post
Upvoted, cos I have learned something new. Wonder how many Steemians really know how to use their power by voting. For the future we will probably need to build a better reward system, SP not to be the only inspiration and motivation for users, also self and bot voting should be re-considered. Reputation should also be included as a part of someone's influence not just SP.
So to make Steemit mainstream and better platform I suggest this:
I believe that there will be less complaining when people will better understand the system and use their voting power more. Not going to elections is the worst you can do for your self but also good for politicians who want to maintain their seats.
Educating people is good, but does it make sense to appeal to an authority in hopes of achieving this on a decentralized network? This is something should be done by us, the users.
The quality of the site is not yet up to par for that kind of promotional campaigning. Right now the UI is still too clunky for that to have any success.
There doesn't necessarily have to be a formal policy about witnesses maintaining blogs. If we raise awareness of the importance of it among the community, that should result in the replacement of witnesses that don't maintain open communication channels with the community by those who do.
Ad1 - It s not really appeal to the authority, more appeal to users and power users who has influence and go trending on a regular basis, they can contribute to raise the general level of knowledge and awareness.
Ad2 - I agree, hope the development will bring solutions for this part.
Ad3 - Also agree, I didn't express myself clear enough, I had more in mind some kind of guidelines from community (users/power users) not really formal requirements for witnesses. Idea is to encourage witnesses to prepare communication channels and policies (blogs) where all users can get details of what position do they represent. (principles, vision, look at the goals, future development solutions....). But like you said in the future evolution will do the selection.
In that case, we are in agreement.
Great point. You should make a post on this. Some great idea, you can expand more on them.
@deserttree thank you for posting about this because the Steemit team has been thinking the same thing and is even planning to break the main Steemit account up because it is a big target with holding so much power! @dan left Steemit Inc as far as I know and still makes posts here which I think means he is now mostly leading EOS and his company.
Thank you for sharing the knowledge. I am learning a lot from you. Keep doing what you are doing. You are awesome.
A lot of crypto is still questionable to me, but I really like the concept of steem. I also, have tried to find an updated whitepaper along with information behind the changes. I don't think everything has been clear. It would be nice if there was an update on the steem platform itself on the changes.
It could just be a steem post, with reposts with some whales to get the information out there to us. I haven't seen anything informative regarding the steem platform. I think a steem post about the fork updates would be useful if released by @ned or @dan on their channels.
I would upvote that for sure.:o
Here is the best explanation I have seen yet:
https://steemit.com/steem-help/@jerrybanfield/steemit-updates-summarized-from-launch-to-19-0
I'm convinced the future of the platform depends on the community.
Commenting, upvoting and hopefully resteeming for decentralization research. There us a true decentralized internet being worked on. It is only a matter of time and understanding.
Ok so i loved your post and I am still trying to wrap my head around the whole idea of cryptocurrency but i love the idea of decentralized network and things of that nature, so if steemit is not decetralized wouldnt that mean the whole blockchain isnt neither??
steem blockchain is semi-decentralized. steemit is a company
I agree, Steemit needs something analogous to worker proposals in BitShares, however I disagree with your assertion about hard forks. There is no reason for hard forks to be a big deal, and a big part of the reason that they are perceived as such is because employees of Blockstream have spent the last 3 years spreading FUD about how they are so dangerous they must never be attempted.
This supported by the censorship regime over at /r/Bitcoin, which has turned that subreddit into an echo-chamber through a variety of mechanisms including hiding vote tallies on comments, rearranging comments putting the ones they want at the top regardless of whether users downvote them, shadow banning (or outright banning) people who attempt to engage in intelligent debate, and armies of trolls and shills, and more.
Hard forks don't even have to be a big deal for PoW coins - which are much less agile than DPoS when it comes to performing network upgrades. Monero is living proof of that - it has 2 hardforks per year currently, regardless of whether there are new features that necessitate a HF (however, so far, due to the fact that it is being actively developed, there always have been).
You need to use space between paragraphs, otherwise its hard to read and understand.
All I am saying is if it was truly decentralized, you wouldn't be able to hard fork easily. Look at bitcoin wars.
Anyway, look at @neoxian's comments, he explains it well how things work. I only raised questions, now I understand better.
Aww - you posed some great questions