Decentralize everything

Yes, that’s the mantra everyone’s been whispering. It’s even the block.one motto. But what exactly does it mean for us?

We have gathered together around the idea of decentralization with the hope that it will end the era of the parasitic middlemen that human interactions currently seem to depend on. Everything, from trade to services to simple communication, depends on some kind of a middleman that enables the interaction and charges a fee for that. The middleman also has the power to censor and control the flow of information, resulting in all kinds of problems and inefficiencies. The solution? Decentralization.

Blockchain technology is an amazing invention that enabled us to reach agreements on various matters without having to rely on a third party. This is awesome, and enables us to remove the parasitic middleman. The way this is achieved is through decentralization. Decentralization was never the goal of this invention though — it is merely a tool. The goal was to remove the central point of failure and the rent-seeking middleman who adds no value.

So when we try to get a new sub-system up and running in the EOS space, like the Worker Proposal System, we should be very careful about how we approach the question of decentralization. We must not forget that decentralization is not a goal in itself but rather a tool that may enable us to achieve something that we want.

And what we want here is simple: efficiency, fairness, progress. We don’t want to overspend, we don’t want to favor a certain group over others, and we want to actually improve the ecosystem through the Worker Proposals. Can decentralization help us achieve this?

My answer is: yes, it can, to an extent. But it cannot accomplish it by itself, and needs help through other methods. Why is decentralization not enough by itself? Because it doesn’t satisfy any of the points I mention above. I’ll go through them one by one.

Anyone who’s tried to reach a decision on a controversial topic in even a small group of 10–20 people should realize that it is almost impossible. It leads to endless arguing, and having no leader makes it impossible to have order to the conversation. Order is possible to enforce through the blockchain technology, but only when we know the exact structure of what we want to accomplish. It is not useful at all when we try to invent new things or reach a decision. For this type of order, you need trust — a component that decentralization doesn’t really help with. So we don’t get any efficiency through decentralization.

Do we get fairness? It may seem like we do at first glance — after all, that’s what decentralization is about! Everyone gets their chance to take part in making the decision — isn’t that fair? Unfortunately, this is deceptive and results in not-so-fair decision-making. The root of the problem is that we will have too many things to decide on and each of them will require extensive research to be conducted by the decision-makers. If everyone is the decision-maker, this means that everyone has to do their own research. Can we expect that each token holder will look into each proposal and reach an informed opinion on how they would (or wouldn’t) help the ecosystem? Can we expect that each token holder will also keep an eye on the big picture and make sure that the separate proposals that get accepted all fit in with each other in the grand scheme of things? Every single one of us? To me, this is unrealistic. The most scarce resource we have on EOS is not RAM or CPU — it is voter attention. If we abuse it, we will find ourselves blocked through this bottleneck, and the result will be that we either won’t get anything accepted, or we will get everything accepted, including fake projects, pet projects, selfish projects, harmful projects, etc.

And finally, does decentralization allows us to make progress? Does it help innovation? I’ll go with a quote by Margaret Mead here: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has”. Has the world ever been changed by a large group of … everyone? No, it takes a few courageous people to do that. Does this sound like decentralization to you? I didn’t think so.

So there is the verdict, at least in my mind: decentralization won’t help us achieve our goals of having a good Worker Proposal System. Basically, we’re screwed: Blockchain + Worker Proposals = slow, painful death. At least until we believe that we have to decentralize everything.

But wait… I have a thought that I’d like to share with you. What if we didn’t have to decentralize everything? What if we only used decentralization where it makes sense, and used other things where it didn’t? Let’s go back to the original problem we’re trying to solve — we want efficiency, fairness and progress. Maybe we can use another tool that we have in the bag instead of decentralization? What about… competition?

Let’s see:

Efficiency? Well, competition may result in several teams competing to achieve the same thing, which is not very efficient at first glance… but it ensures that we get the best result in the end. So not so bad on that front.

Fairness? Competition can be fair or unfair based on external factors — the rules of the game. If we set no rules, everything’s fair. It will be hard to come up with the right rules we need to set up, but once we do — it’s really important that we find a way to enforce them. In other words, it’s possible, although difficult.

Progress? The best way to have progress is to need progress. Competition aligns perfectly here — when teams compete, they need every little advantage to gain a competitive edge on the rest. Teams need progress, so progress is inevitable.

Let me go back to the title of this article. “Decentralize everything” sounds pretty noble at first glance, but once you dig into it, I’m not so sure it’s the best approach. I propose to change it, just a little bit:

Decentralize everything that it makes sense to decentralize.