Is Ethereum As Decentralized as Bitcoin?
This post is about a recent twitter beef that made me reconsider what decentralization really means. A Bitcoin maximalist helped me realize that Ethereum has elements of centralization that I was completely unaware of.
// describes how twitter beef went down
Recently, I became very curious about the strong opinions that Bitcoin maximalists had against Ethereum. Originally, I didn’t pay much attention to their opinions because they seemed too emotionally charged. On Twitter they generally call every crypto that isn’t Bitcoin a shitcoin. They even call Ethereum a scam!
Despite their up front opinions, I put effort into understanding their arguments beyond a surface level. I didn’t think I would discover anything that would convert me into a Bitcoin maximalist, but I was confident I would learn a lot.
After googling stuff for a couple of weeks, I didn’t find anything convincing. So then I took to crypto twitter just to make sure I was being thorough.
I tweeted the following:
After work, I got hit with this tweet by a dude named Francis that had over 30,000 followers.
// gametime
Game on. I fired back with this one.
I thought it was pretty good.
But then he blew my mind with the following tweets.
If you didn’t catch why my mind was blown, this is why. He pointed out that unless you run an Ethereum node, you are trusting a third party to provide you access to the blockchain.
Augur is one of the few projects to hit the Ethereum mainnet. When you download the Augur application, it automatically connects you to an Infura node. The Infura node is the default option.
Francis was implying that because Augur users are receiving the blockchain from a single source (even though it was from an Ethereum node), we are trusting a third party! We are trusting that Infura is giving us correct information about the blockchain. This also seems like a central point of failure.
// I wasn’t 100% sold yet
Okay, that seems like an issue. Having a client/server relationship with an Infura node is not the most decentralized way to use Augur. I also suspect that most Augur users are connecting to Infura by default.
But as long as users have the option to connect Augur to their own Ethereum node, we are in the clear right???
// have you ever run a synced node???
As of late, a growing number of Ethereum users claim that they are unable to fully sync their Ethereum node. Many claim to be stuck a few hundred blocks behind the latest block on the blockchain (best block). Running your own node appears to be getting more and more difficult for the crypto enthusiast.
Running your own node did seem to be a growing problem, but I had never attempted to run a node before, so I didn’t know the extent of the problem.
I then realized I was never a peer in the peer to peer network.
// are you a peer in the p2p network???
I started thinking about how I interacted with the blockchain over the last 2 years. I sent Ether transactions through a hardware wallet and the MyEtherWallet website.
This means I do not propagate my own transactions to the Ethereum network. MEW and whatever node my hardware wallet connects to does this on my behalf. I also relied on Etherscan to check if the network verified my transaction.
There was a lot of trust involved in these interactions. By having third parties send my transaction to the Ethereum network, I was operating outside of this peer to peer network the entire time!
// begin quest to sync an Ethereum node
Francis revealed some obvious holes in my thinking when it came to my understanding of what decentralization really means. This does not mean that I give up on Ethereum! A lot of Francis’s argument depends on whether an everyday user can run a fully synced node on their laptop. At the time of our twitter beef, I did not know if this was possible.
This exchange initiated the most important series I will write so far. In order to understand how decentralized Ethereum really is, I plan to explore the following topics:
- The ways we are (and aren’t) dependent on Infura, MEW and Etherscan
- The implications of running your own node on decentralization.
- My journey in trying to run a full node.
- The pros and cons of running a node
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