The Decentralisation of Power

https://player.vimeo. com/video/674833323

One of the words used most commonly when talking about Bitcoin is ‘decentralisation’. Unfortunately there have been times when this has been misunderstood to the point that it has become a destructive impediment to the network’s need to scale. It is important to distinguish between decentralisation of consensus; such that anyone who holds a copy of the ledger, versus decentralisation of decision making power and infrastructure.

Nodes are controlled by enterprise entities which have corporate structures and operate within highly regulated environments. The intense hardware development and difficulty involved in participating in the mining process limits participation, however no one party within the global group has leadership or power over the whole network.

While the network has no ‘centralised’ leadership, the system is still coordinated and operates in a manner much more akin to a distributed system. The requirement to show Proof of Work to submit a block limits the ability of any party to participate in the consensus process. Valid blocks are the only type of message that can impact the network rules, and they cost money to create which creates an environment where investment is incentivised. Only nodes who perform the work of building blocks and solving the block hash puzzle have the right to agree or disagree about which rules are being enforced.

https://player.vimeo. com/video/649874133

The most important aspect of this is that the only participants who can play any part in determining the outcome or direction for the network are being paid to do so. There is no altruism in the network and the participants who use their resources in the most effective manner are rewarded long term.

Largely thanks to the first seen rule, there is a strong incentive for nodes to have very low latency connections to the most likely sub-set of nodes to find the next block. This gives the node the best possible chance of making other nodes aware as rapidly as possible of their block discoveries This is another way to minimise the chance of orphan blocks being created.