[Cryptography] Decentralized Vs Distributed Blockchain

[Tony Arcieri]

Like it was when Paul Baran wrote On Distributed Communication Networks in
the '60s, "decentralized" is a meaningless buzzword, and "distributed" and
"federated" became the terms of choice after Baran's paper. We can try to
describe "decentralized" with terms like "no central operator", but this
applies to "federated" systems as well. We could say "decentralized"
systems operate using end-user controlled cryptographic keys, but that also
applies to systems like Signal and WhatsApp that are certainly centralized.

By routing all events through a single global event log, Bitcoin and other
so-called blockchain/DLT systems wind up being curiously more centralized
than many federated systems, with its capacity fixed as a global constant
regardless of how many nodes join the system.

Many centralized "blockchain" systems wind up looking like CT logs, with
one or more signatures securing the system instead of a proof-of-work.

-- 
Tony Arcieri
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