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Hey, how's it going, everybody?

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It's me, Rorar Diego, that one kid that you know.

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You're probably not seeing me as much these days as you would if we were in the physical thing, and I'm running around the village and stuff, but that also means you get to experience all these other things that people do.

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How's DEF CON been for you guys, huh?

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Digital.

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Is this something you'd like to repeat?

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Is this something you'd like to do another time?

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I don't know.

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Hopefully, if we do decide to do it, it's not going to be under the virus situation, but whatever.

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Daniel Kim's got some good stuff.

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I've been chilling in the Discord.

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We have some people hanging out in the voice over there.

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If you have questions about Monero, or you want to talk about pretty much anything, drop by our Discord in the Monero Village area.

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We've got a voice chat where at least somebody's usually hanging out from the community to answer questions.

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Okay.

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I am set to speak now.

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I'm set to speak today.

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I got a little bit of a half hour slot to fill, but this time I don't have to fill it with a bunch of filler, because it's an actual talk that I'm going to be giving.

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We're going to talk about decentralization in a centralized world.

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Apologies to all the people tuning in from Europe.

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I'm spelling it with a Z, which is the American spelling of decentralization and centralized, instead of an S.

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And when I see it with an S, it makes me cringe inside.

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So, without further ado, let's go ahead and get started on this.

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Decentralization.

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When people hear about blockchain, or when a blockchain project is talking about their project, they're like, yeah, we have these goals of decentralization.

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We really feel that decentralization is going to make all the difference.

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And that's one of the things we're working towards on a technological level.

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And nobody ever stops to ask and think, why?

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What is the purpose of decentralization?

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At this point, it's really just kind of this buzzword, right?

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That they say decentralization, you go, that's good, right?

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So, if they make that a goal and it's good, then that means that everything's good.

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But it's not quite that simple.

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It's not quite that way.

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If we don't know what decentralization is for, if we don't know why decentralization is a thing, why it's important, and if we don't know, like, the ways to achieve it, then really we're just throwing words on things and nothing gets better.

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In fact, many things would benefit from not being decentralized.

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And we're not going to be able to think about this critically and see what things should be decentralized and what things shouldn't be decentralized unless we know really what it's for.

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So, this is kind of a rundown of what I'm going to be talking about right now.

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We're going to give some definitions about decentralization and we're going to talk about the different forms that it can take place in.

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Because there is more than just one form, really.

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When people say the word decentralization, they mean many, many, many different things.

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Because it applies to many areas of a cryptocurrency project.

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We're going to explore some trade-offs.

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So, when you choose decentralization, it's not all positives.

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There are negatives that go along with it.

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And then we're going to look at a practical application and see how that can kind of help us as we look at cryptocurrency projects in general and evaluate them and try to think about them critically to see if they're doing something good or if they're just kind of wasting resources.

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And yeah, that's where we're going to go.

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And then from here, depending on time, I may give some light touching on kind of the world as we know it and how we're moving into a more decentralized place.

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Because pretty much our world is very centralized.

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As is the name of the talk.

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So, who am I?

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I'm Diego Salazar.

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I contribute to Monero.

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And that's pretty much everything you need to know about me.

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There's my Twitter.

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You can go to my Twitter.

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I don't do anything on my Twitter.

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I don't tweet hardly ever.

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So, yeah.

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I have long curly hair and some people like that.

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So, if that's your thing, then give me a thumbs up in chat.

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Okay.

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Decentralized.

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Decentralization.

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As stated before, this is basically just a new buzzword, right?

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We have all of these things that have become buzzwords in the world.

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Blockchain is the name of the game.

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But it is also a buzzword.

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Because as Daniel Kim was alluding to in his talk, when people are like, oh, yeah, we're adding blockchain to the automobile industry.

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And, you know, their socks just shoot way up.

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At this point, blockchain is a buzzword.

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Privacy is also a buzzword, right?

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You have Bitcoin and all these transparency coins are like, oh, yeah, you know, we're not a privacy coin.

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We're not privacy first, but we're adding privacy.

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Decentralization is another big buzzword.

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And it's probably one of the top ones.

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If you look at almost any cryptocurrency project, I can guarantee you that the word decentralization is going to be somewhere in there.

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These people, this is they just know that this is desirable, but they don't know why.

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So, let's go ahead and do the definitions.

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And like all boring people, when I do definitions, we start with the dictionary.

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So, decentralization is defined by Merriam-Webster dictionary as the dispersion or distribution of functions and powers.

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So, then also we're going to define decentralize to move the control of an organization or government from a single place to several smaller ones.

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And this is defined by the Cambridge dictionary.

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And I would also expand that definition somewhat so it's not just a single place to several smaller ones.

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It can really be, you know, from 3 to 5, from 10 to 20, from any smaller number of places to larger number of smaller ones.

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And so, the word centralize is just the opposite of that, right?

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We're moving from many places of power or functions and putting them from many different places to less places.

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In the most extreme case, into one place, right?

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One person can do it.

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So, we're going to give an example.

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We're going to talk about... we're going to move into why would we want to decentralize?

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What is the point of decentralizing?

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So, in this example, we all start a club, right?

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We start a really cool club.

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We all love Twilight series.

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We all love the Twilight series.

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I can't think of a single person on this entire planet that has not read the books, watched the movies, wrote fan fiction, all these things, right?

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Everybody's crazy about the Twilight series.

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So, we start our series club.

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And everyone is either on team Jacob or team Edward.

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And we need to vote.

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We need to vote who is going to be the leaders.

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We need to vote on who's going to be the leader of our club, who's going to be leading this thing.

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But everybody is in these two very political parties of team Edward or team Jacob.

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And I am a team Edward fan, maybe.

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And you're a team Jacob fan, so I don't want the team Jacob people to be in charge because they're going to cover our Twilight clubhouse in team Jacob stuff.

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And that would be awful.

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I want Edward posters on the wall.

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So, I want to make sure that whoever I'm voting for is part of team Edward.

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So, everybody's gonna vote, right?

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Let's say we have 20-ish people.

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Everybody writes their thing on the ballot and we all put it in the box.

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But here, a problem begins to arise.

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I jumped a little bit ahead.

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We have to count these votes.

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We have to count these votes.

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And who are we gonna put in charge of these votes?

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In theory, this voting is anonymous.

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We don't know who voted what.

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But does it really matter what anybody voted?

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And let me tell you why.

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If we put one person in charge of counting all of the votes, and this person is a team Jacob person, as signified by the J here, then they could just, like, either not really count the votes or count them but not really care and say, oh, Jacob won.

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This guy from team Jacob won.

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And we would all have to trust this person because we didn't count the votes.

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Right?

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And this is just not something that we want to do.

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So this is on one end of the extreme, where we get one person to do it.

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On the other end of the extreme, we get everybody to stay.

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Everybody is staying here to count the votes.

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But the kids are getting tired.

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And it's been a long day for me.

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I want to get home.

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I don't want to stay here and count all these votes.

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The only way to be absolutely sure with zero trust of who won this is if everybody, absolutely everybody stays, and everybody takes out each vote, looks at it, passes it around, and everybody's watching everybody else to make sure we're not doing some sneaky substitutions or anything like that.

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Right?

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So everybody has to stay.

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Everybody has to look at each vote and keep their own tally.

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Then we compare our tallies to each other.

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And if we all come up with the same thing, then there is 100% assurance with zero trust that we have a correct vote.

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That's the other end of the extreme.

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But that requires everybody to take their Saturday to stay here.

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And we don't want to stay here.

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But as we just discussed in this first example, if we have just this one person here, well, they can go ahead and report whatever they want, and we would never be the wiser.

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So what else can we do?

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Well, we can decentralize.

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So from this one person, we've now moved to two people.

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Right?

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And in this case, we're hoping... we're hoping that one is Team Edward, one is Team Jacob.

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So that way, we know for sure that, you know, they're not gonna collaborate.

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Because what if they're both Team Jacob?

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Then they're like, okay, so we both want Team Jacob to win.

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So we're going to agree together that we're not gonna really care about the actual vote count.

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This is just what we're going to be reporting.

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So we have to kind of make sure that we get somebody who's on Team Edward and somebody else who's on Team Jacob.

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So that way, when they count the votes, if one person tries to lie, the other person is incentivized to say, no, that's not true.

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No, that's not true.

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But there are some attacks that can happen here as well.

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This is not a bulletproof, foolproof kind of thing.

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Because what if one of two things happen?

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I've got a couple examples.

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What if the guy that is known as Team Edward is actually a secret closet Team Jacob guy?

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Right?

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He doesn't tell anybody.

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He's actually changed teams recently.

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Or he's been convinced by a family member.

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Or he's just lying for whatever reason.

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And he is converted to Team Jacob.

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Now we have two Team Jacob people.

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And it's the same thing that I discussed.

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They're just gonna agree, okay, it doesn't matter what the vote is.

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We're just gonna say that the Team Jacob guy wins.

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Alternatively, another scenario is the first Team Jacob person is quite wealthy or powerful or has a lot of resources.

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And they're able to say, hey, I will give you money, resources, whatever you want, if you agree with me that it doesn't matter what the vote is.

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We just agree Team Jacob wins.

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And maybe this person cares more about the resources than about their allegiance to any particular team.

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So, they are persuaded.

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Well, let's try to decentralize even further.

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Because we don't want any of those attacks to happen.

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We want to make sure that this is a fair election.

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So, we decentralize even further.

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And we say, okay, we got four people now.

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Hopefully two of them Team Edward, two of them Team Jacob.

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But now we get to some really interesting kind of game theory things that are happening here.

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Because what if we're able to get one person to our side?

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Either through either of the ways that we were talking about before, where we were able to convince them through resources or they were a secret agent all along, whatever the case may be.

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Now we're kind of this three against one scenario.

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And these three people can threaten this person.

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Hey, if you don't keep quiet about this or if you don't do what we say, then we're gonna burn all your posters, in real life scenarios it can be things like they can threaten violence, they can threaten family resources, whatever.

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And now this person is gonna have to go along with them because they have the numbers advantage.

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So, we've decentralized into a place where in theory it's like, okay, four people is good.

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But not everybody has to stay and waste their time counting all of the votes.

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But we have enough people that we can trust that nobody's gonna do anything weird.

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But in this scenario, it's not enough.

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So, we can do this again and again and again and again until we're all the way back to everybody having to stay to count the votes.

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So, if you're seeing a pattern here, I hope you're seeing a pattern here.

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And this pattern is that the more we trust people, the more convenient it is for everybody.

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Because if we only have one person counting those votes, that's a lot of trust placed in that individual.

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But it's the only person inconvenienced is that one person.

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It's much more convenient for everybody else.

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They get to go home and watch television, right?

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And the less trust we have, the more inconvenient it is for everybody.

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And this is basically decentralization in a nutshell.

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This is going to apply everywhere across the board.

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When we look at blockchain, we are decentralizing a database, right?

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It's just a database that has ledger information that says this person has this much money and this person has this much money.

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But we're decentralizing it.

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So, it's now not on just one server where we have to trust the system administrator is not going to do anything bad with that.

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Or maybe they're not malicious, but they're incompetent.

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And so, hackers get in and they mess with the database.

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No.

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We give the blockchain, we give this database to whoever wants it.

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And now because everybody has it, we don't have to trust anybody.

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So, if I'm like, oh, do I have an accurate copy of the blockchain?

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I can compare it to many of my peers and say, okay, yes, it agrees with all of them.

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So, we're all good.

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We're all fine.

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But it's much more inefficient.

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It's much more inconvenient.

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Because if you want the most trustless option, you have to download the whole blockchain onto your computer.

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Now, you have to take up your hard drive space, your bandwidth, your everything to be absolutely trustless.

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And when we start thinking about the fact that this is always going to be the tradeoff, the more we decentralize, the more inefficient it is, the more inconvenient it is, we need to start asking the question, what things need to be trustless?

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00:15:02,270 --> 00:15:04,270
This is the core question.

223
00:15:04,270 --> 00:15:06,430
What things need to be trustless?

224
00:15:06,430 --> 00:15:10,730
Because those are the things that definitely we can start to decentralize.

225
00:15:10,910 --> 00:15:13,730
Knowing that there is going to be a cost.

226
00:15:13,790 --> 00:15:17,030
But not everything does need to be trustless.

227
00:15:17,030 --> 00:15:28,110
When we start thinking, okay, to give a very stupid example, and sorry to call people out here, there was a coin back in the 2017 boom called CampusCoin.

228
00:15:28,250 --> 00:15:38,230
And the idea was that CampusCoin was a cryptocurrency that students would be able to use to pay tuition or their meal plans or all these things, right?

229
00:15:38,710 --> 00:15:45,130
So we're trying to make paying our tuition and paying for our meal plans for our students a trustless endeavor.

230
00:15:45,430 --> 00:15:52,430
And I just didn't see or hear the outcry of students that were like, these universities are cheating me.

231
00:15:52,430 --> 00:15:54,670
I paid the money, and they said they never received it.

232
00:15:54,670 --> 00:15:55,990
I don't trust them.

233
00:15:56,310 --> 00:15:59,210
We need to make sure that they're in check.

234
00:15:59,210 --> 00:16:01,630
We need to make sure that this is a whole trustless kind of thing.

235
00:16:01,630 --> 00:16:03,450
I didn't see this, right?

236
00:16:03,450 --> 00:16:06,390
This is something that does not need to be trustless.

237
00:16:06,390 --> 00:16:10,690
Same with Dentacoin, paying dentists, right?

238
00:16:10,690 --> 00:16:13,510
How many people have been defrauded by their dentist?

239
00:16:13,510 --> 00:16:18,630
I mean, maybe there's some of you, and you might raise your hand and say, I see a need for Dentacoin.

240
00:16:18,690 --> 00:16:23,650
But I think for the majority of us, we're able to pay them and they're like, thank you for your money.

241
00:16:23,650 --> 00:16:25,670
Here's your teeth cleaning, and we're good.

242
00:16:27,150 --> 00:16:32,730
So kind of in this whole blockchain area, it makes sense in some spaces.

243
00:16:32,730 --> 00:16:35,590
For example, distributed ledger technology.

244
00:16:35,950 --> 00:16:43,210
There is strong motivation for people to try to mess with money information.

245
00:16:43,510 --> 00:16:43,650
Why?

246
00:16:43,650 --> 00:16:50,290
Because I can become a millionaire or a billionaire overnight if I have the capability to mess with the money situation.

247
00:16:50,290 --> 00:16:54,490
Or I can be malicious against somebody else, and they have $100, and now they have $0.

248
00:16:54,490 --> 00:16:55,530
There's strong incentive.

249
00:16:55,530 --> 00:16:57,310
Money is such a strong incentive.

250
00:16:57,310 --> 00:17:04,890
So kind of this ledger-based information, there is a lot of reason why we would want to trust people less.

251
00:17:04,890 --> 00:17:13,670
So we may be able and willing to decentralize, become more inefficient so that way we can trust people less.

252
00:17:14,310 --> 00:17:18,350
But I mean, we just can't do that for everything.

253
00:17:20,270 --> 00:17:25,210
But here's the big thing about decentralization in terms of blockchain.

254
00:17:25,870 --> 00:17:29,510
It's, as I alluded to earlier, it's not just one thing.

255
00:17:29,510 --> 00:17:35,750
When somebody says, we are a decentralized project, which you hear pretty much everywhere, what does this mean?

256
00:17:35,750 --> 00:17:41,050
We're going to start kind of poking into many of the ways that a project can be decentralized.

257
00:17:41,050 --> 00:17:43,030
One way, who writes the code?

258
00:17:43,030 --> 00:17:43,570
Okay.

259
00:17:43,570 --> 00:17:51,550
So all of these wallets, all of this protocol, all this stuff needs to be written by some entity.

260
00:17:51,990 --> 00:17:55,070
Usually, like pretty much always by people, right?

261
00:17:55,070 --> 00:17:57,290
Who is actually writing this code?

262
00:17:57,290 --> 00:17:58,510
Is it one person?

263
00:17:58,510 --> 00:18:00,050
Is it 10 people?

264
00:18:00,050 --> 00:18:05,150
Maybe they have 20 CEOs and one engineer that's actually writing the code.

265
00:18:05,150 --> 00:18:06,310
Is this decentralized?

266
00:18:06,310 --> 00:18:14,870
They have 20 CEOs, so 20 people looking over making sure the project is okay, or 20 people in high CT positions, CEO, CTO, these kinds of things, right?

267
00:18:14,870 --> 00:18:18,190
But they don't know the code well enough to be able to check on this guy or whatever.

268
00:18:18,190 --> 00:18:21,910
So functionally, there's one person who is writing this code.

269
00:18:22,430 --> 00:18:26,890
And he has no oversight, which means that this person can put back doors inside.

270
00:18:26,890 --> 00:18:29,110
They can, you know, they can do whatever they want.

271
00:18:30,370 --> 00:18:32,370
And nobody's going to be around to stop them.

272
00:18:32,370 --> 00:18:33,590
Who's writing the code?

273
00:18:33,610 --> 00:18:34,410
Finances.

274
00:18:34,430 --> 00:18:35,750
Who has the money?

275
00:18:36,110 --> 00:18:37,490
Who's distributing the money?

276
00:18:37,490 --> 00:18:55,270
If there's one guy or just a very small team of people who is handling the money of a project, then they can choose... it gets a little subtle here, and it gets a little not quite so on the nose, but they can hire engineers that maybe they're less than scrupulous,

277
00:18:55,270 --> 00:19:11,910
or maybe they're hiring engineers that are incompetent, or maybe they're hiring engineers that adhere to a certain design philosophy and not to another one, so they don't have to have as much infighting to get the... to get the project to go in the direction that they want it to go,

278
00:19:11,910 --> 00:19:13,510
rather than another direction.

279
00:19:13,850 --> 00:19:22,530
This kind of stuff is important, because when we're talking about decentralization, trusting less, are we just like, you know, the development one is the one that's most well known.

280
00:19:22,530 --> 00:19:23,470
Who's writing the code?

281
00:19:23,470 --> 00:19:24,650
How many eyes are on the code?

282
00:19:24,650 --> 00:19:26,010
But the same thing with money.

283
00:19:26,010 --> 00:19:27,450
How many eyes are on the money?

284
00:19:27,590 --> 00:19:28,890
How many eyes are on the money?

285
00:19:28,890 --> 00:19:34,390
Who's paying to either hire somebody or fire somebody or to get this research done?

286
00:19:34,390 --> 00:19:44,610
What if, you know, there's two papers, two research papers that are done for two different, totally different directions, that we can take a coin in terms of evolving the protocol?

287
00:19:44,690 --> 00:19:50,690
Well, the person with the finances decides to fund an audit for one of those papers, but not the other.

288
00:19:50,890 --> 00:19:57,510
Once that audit is complete, they can say, look, this way has been audited, and they said it was good.

289
00:19:57,510 --> 00:20:00,830
This other one is unaudited, so I really don't think we should do that.

290
00:20:00,830 --> 00:20:05,630
Well, just like that, you have influenced a community because of money decisions.

291
00:20:05,690 --> 00:20:09,710
So it's also, decentralization also needs to take place kind of on a financial level.

292
00:20:09,710 --> 00:20:16,150
If there's only one group or a small group of people that has all of the money, that's something you also need to watch out for.

293
00:20:16,910 --> 00:20:17,750
Research.

294
00:20:18,210 --> 00:20:19,930
Who's doing the research?

295
00:20:20,650 --> 00:20:34,830
Because, you know, just as I alluded to in the audit thing, perhaps a researcher comes across two or three different ways that things can go, you know, evolve from a cryptographic perspective, and they decide to really pour their all into one of them that they think is the best and not put as much effort into the other ones.

296
00:20:34,870 --> 00:20:36,390
They're going to have a lot more.

297
00:20:36,930 --> 00:20:38,890
Do we trust this researcher?

298
00:20:38,890 --> 00:20:41,090
And many times, many times, yes.

299
00:20:41,090 --> 00:20:43,250
Many times we think they're not malicious, right?

300
00:20:43,250 --> 00:20:46,270
But we can never be absolutely positively sure.

301
00:20:46,270 --> 00:20:51,430
When we're talking about decentralization, when we're talking about making things trustless, it's not just on the code.

302
00:20:51,430 --> 00:20:52,430
It's not just on the money.

303
00:20:52,430 --> 00:20:53,570
It's also on the science.

304
00:20:53,570 --> 00:20:55,030
Who's doing the science?

305
00:20:56,610 --> 00:20:59,210
And practical stuff.

306
00:20:59,210 --> 00:21:00,090
Practical stuff.

307
00:21:00,090 --> 00:21:01,770
Who's running the day-to-day?

308
00:21:02,910 --> 00:21:05,870
Who's running the community management stuff?

309
00:21:05,870 --> 00:21:07,690
All of these are ways.

310
00:21:07,690 --> 00:21:11,730
All of these are ways that decentralization needs to be looked at.

311
00:21:11,730 --> 00:21:20,670
So, when a project says, we are a decentralized project, maybe they mean in one way, like we have several different engineers or we're open source.

312
00:21:20,690 --> 00:21:24,610
Usually what they mean is we're open source, which means there are several eyeballs on the project.

313
00:21:25,090 --> 00:21:31,190
But when you start digging deeper, you're like, oh, but we do have a small group of scientists that's pretty impenetrable.

314
00:21:31,550 --> 00:21:34,770
Like, as in, it's hard for you to do your own research.

315
00:21:34,970 --> 00:21:36,950
And they're the ones that do the majority of the research.

316
00:21:36,950 --> 00:21:37,790
Oh, who handles the money?

317
00:21:37,790 --> 00:21:41,530
Oh, well, see, we've got this little group that's responsible for that.

318
00:21:41,530 --> 00:21:42,650
What kind of oversight do they have?

319
00:21:42,650 --> 00:21:44,770
Oh, we just we make sure they do good stuff.

320
00:21:44,770 --> 00:21:49,390
So, they start hand-waving a lot of the centralized areas.

321
00:21:49,970 --> 00:21:53,830
They start hand-waving away a lot of the centralized the ways that they are centralized.

322
00:21:54,010 --> 00:21:58,550
And they're like, and we want you to only focus on the fact that our development is decentralized.

323
00:22:00,190 --> 00:22:04,910
Here's what I'm not gonna take a lot of time to get into, but mining, centralization, decentralization.

324
00:22:04,910 --> 00:22:07,550
This is something that, you know, Monero tried to do with RandomX.

325
00:22:07,990 --> 00:22:16,210
Asics tend to lead to centralization of mining over a period of time to particular people that are able to create new Asics and stuff.

326
00:22:16,210 --> 00:22:17,770
And we don't have time to go over in that.

327
00:22:17,770 --> 00:22:20,730
Daniel Kim has kind of discussed this in his talk.

328
00:22:20,930 --> 00:22:22,710
So, I would give that a look.

329
00:22:22,710 --> 00:22:28,010
But basically, the goal is to explain to you guys that there are many ways that something is decentralized.

330
00:22:28,010 --> 00:22:40,690
And particularly when a project is centralized in many areas, I would even say in most areas, they do their best to divert attention to the areas, very few, that do exist where they are decentralized.

331
00:22:40,910 --> 00:22:42,450
And that's usually the protocol level.

332
00:22:42,450 --> 00:22:46,610
Because blockchain by design is pretty much decentralized as long as there's miners and stuff.

333
00:22:46,610 --> 00:22:48,010
Like, it's just the way that it is.

334
00:22:48,030 --> 00:22:53,130
And they'll point all eyeballs to that and say, see, we're decentralized when really everything else is centralized.

335
00:22:53,330 --> 00:22:54,790
So, we've gone through the what.

336
00:22:55,190 --> 00:22:55,930
What is it?

337
00:22:55,930 --> 00:22:57,170
We gave some definitions.

338
00:22:57,290 --> 00:22:58,690
We've gone through the where, right?

339
00:22:58,690 --> 00:22:59,650
It can be mining.

340
00:23:00,730 --> 00:23:02,170
It could be development.

341
00:23:02,230 --> 00:23:03,310
We've gone through the why.

342
00:23:03,310 --> 00:23:04,630
Why would we want to decentralize?

343
00:23:04,630 --> 00:23:06,250
Because we want to reduce trust.

344
00:23:06,370 --> 00:23:08,390
Now, we need to talk about the how.

345
00:23:08,390 --> 00:23:13,070
And so, to discuss the how, I'm going to say that I start a new project.

346
00:23:13,070 --> 00:23:15,490
This new project, SaveTheMarmots.com.

347
00:23:15,490 --> 00:23:16,830
It's not a real website.

348
00:23:16,830 --> 00:23:17,990
I mean, maybe it is.

349
00:23:17,990 --> 00:23:19,270
You can go there and check.

350
00:23:19,270 --> 00:23:20,870
But it's not something I've created.

351
00:23:21,070 --> 00:23:22,850
But we're gonna say I've started a new project.

352
00:23:22,950 --> 00:23:24,170
SaveTheMarmots.com.

353
00:23:24,270 --> 00:23:29,670
And you come in and you say, okay, I want to judge whether this project is worth my time.

354
00:23:29,770 --> 00:23:35,270
I want to judge whether this project is worth my attention, my money, whatever the case.

355
00:23:35,270 --> 00:23:37,330
Whatever this cause is for.

356
00:23:37,330 --> 00:23:40,570
I want to make sure that I'm not gonna be wasting any of my resources on this.

357
00:23:40,750 --> 00:23:42,070
So, SaveTheMarmots.

358
00:23:42,670 --> 00:23:44,490
And I say, it's very decentralized.

359
00:23:44,490 --> 00:23:45,490
It's very decentralized.

360
00:23:45,490 --> 00:23:47,290
And so, you're like, ooh, decentralized, that sounds good.

361
00:23:47,290 --> 00:23:49,410
So, that's a couple points in its favor.

362
00:23:49,490 --> 00:23:51,470
I may put some money in there.

363
00:23:51,590 --> 00:23:53,490
But we gotta ask the big questions.

364
00:23:53,770 --> 00:23:55,170
We gotta ask the big question.

365
00:23:56,470 --> 00:24:00,010
First of all, does this need to be decentralized?

366
00:24:00,210 --> 00:24:05,290
This is always, always, always, always the first big question that you should ask yourself.

367
00:24:05,290 --> 00:24:16,810
When they say, we are revolutionizing the real estate industry, the automobile industry, the trash picking up industry, the dentist industry.

368
00:24:16,950 --> 00:24:20,310
We're decentralizing all of these industries.

369
00:24:20,310 --> 00:24:21,810
We need to start thinking.

370
00:24:21,810 --> 00:24:23,090
Critical thinking.

371
00:24:23,090 --> 00:24:25,450
Does this need to be decentralized?

372
00:24:25,570 --> 00:24:29,470
Is this something that would benefit from a reduction of trust?

373
00:24:29,510 --> 00:24:32,670
Is this something where all the parties don't trust each other?

374
00:24:32,670 --> 00:24:36,590
Is this something where we would be willing to tolerate the inefficiencies?

375
00:24:36,590 --> 00:24:38,150
What are the inefficiencies?

376
00:24:38,150 --> 00:24:40,330
They may not be as neat on the surface.

377
00:24:40,330 --> 00:24:46,630
So, for blockchain, the inefficiency is it requires proof of work, which requires electrical consumption.

378
00:24:46,630 --> 00:24:48,710
It requires power to secure the blockchain.

379
00:24:48,710 --> 00:24:51,690
It requires the database to be on everybody's computer.

380
00:24:51,690 --> 00:24:52,970
That's a lot of space.

381
00:24:53,110 --> 00:24:55,750
So, for blockchain, we might know what those are.

382
00:24:55,750 --> 00:25:06,390
But if we start looking at decentralizing other industries, we may not know, it may not be readily apparent to us, what are the inefficiencies that are going to come from decentralizing something?

383
00:25:07,370 --> 00:25:09,130
We need to start asking the big question.

384
00:25:09,130 --> 00:25:12,090
Does this need to be decentralized?

385
00:25:13,050 --> 00:25:17,210
But there are a few other smaller questions that we can ask.

386
00:25:17,210 --> 00:25:20,470
Because that's a big question, and it's probably the most important.

387
00:25:20,630 --> 00:25:24,750
And maybe they're able to give you a good reason why they think that this should be decentralized.

388
00:25:24,750 --> 00:25:28,030
They'll typically say, there is a good use case for this.

389
00:25:28,730 --> 00:25:30,310
Usually it's a bunch of bullshit.

390
00:25:30,310 --> 00:25:31,610
But that's what they'll say.

391
00:25:31,750 --> 00:25:33,790
There's a good use case for this.

392
00:25:33,930 --> 00:25:42,130
But there's a bunch of smaller questions that we can use to tease out whether, A, this thing needs to be decentralized, and B, whether the project itself is decentralized.

393
00:25:42,190 --> 00:25:45,810
For example, who do I talk to to get information?

394
00:25:46,590 --> 00:25:48,110
Who do I need to approach?

395
00:25:48,110 --> 00:25:52,790
Who do I need to talk to to get any information about this product?

396
00:25:52,790 --> 00:26:03,070
If it is largely contained within one website, one person, one department, right?

397
00:26:03,070 --> 00:26:15,670
If it's only a small group of people that is able to give you accurate information about this, then that means that for the most part, the information is going to be coming from a select group that's going to tell you what you want to hear.

398
00:26:16,490 --> 00:26:18,650
Are there dissenting viewpoints?

399
00:26:18,670 --> 00:26:21,670
Are those dissenting viewpoints given a platform?

400
00:26:22,350 --> 00:26:37,490
Assuming they're not trying to spread misinformation, which I really feel sorry for everyone in this day and age of social media, where there's so much misinformation everywhere, there's so much noise, it's really hard to distinguish between what is signal and what is noise,

401
00:26:37,490 --> 00:26:40,370
but that is another talk in and of itself.

402
00:26:40,710 --> 00:26:54,770
But are these dissenters who have different ideas that are, in theory, in a perfect world, presented in a respectful manner, and they have good points, and they address people's points and stuff, are these people given a platform, or are they silenced?

403
00:26:55,730 --> 00:27:03,190
If they are silenced, then that says that this is a pretty centralized thing, because you need a certain amount of power to silence these people.

404
00:27:04,470 --> 00:27:13,190
If we look at Bitcoin and BTC, from the subreddit perspective, there was a group of people that didn't like the Bitcoin subreddit, so they made their own.

405
00:27:13,330 --> 00:27:14,670
They made BTC.

406
00:27:14,670 --> 00:27:22,890
And regardless of what you think about these two subreddits, I don't really care what you think about these things, but these voices were not silenced, and they couldn't be silenced.

407
00:27:22,890 --> 00:27:30,790
In one area, they were, but they were very easily able to build a following, build a community of people who disagreed with the first one.

408
00:27:31,150 --> 00:27:36,330
Whereas many people, those things get attacked, those places get shut down.

409
00:27:37,650 --> 00:27:45,810
It's really bad if you start getting like some cease and desist letters that shows, okay, these people really do own pretty much everything, and it's not decentralized at all.

410
00:27:46,110 --> 00:27:50,830
Question two, what is centralized, and why?

411
00:27:50,830 --> 00:27:54,850
So this is a bit of a this is a bit of a funky thing that I'm going to throw in here.

412
00:27:54,850 --> 00:27:59,250
It's probably best no, let me let me take a step back.

413
00:27:59,250 --> 00:28:00,570
Maybe not probably best.

414
00:28:01,430 --> 00:28:11,650
Some projects may choose to centralize some things, and we need to understand why they do that, because maybe that's the way to go.

415
00:28:11,650 --> 00:28:13,010
For example, payments.

416
00:28:13,010 --> 00:28:22,610
Maybe it's just easier to get people paid on time in terms of researchers who decide they can devote their time and energy to this, or engineers, or people who are going to code full-time.

417
00:28:22,610 --> 00:28:29,490
They say, you know what, we have decided to centralize the way we do our finances so we can pay people on time so they don't leave us.

418
00:28:29,490 --> 00:28:37,550
If they can give you a reason for their centralization, now at that point, you can kind of decide for yourself, well, is this kind of worth the trust?

419
00:28:38,130 --> 00:28:39,530
Maybe, maybe not.

420
00:28:39,530 --> 00:28:52,470
But if they're like, oh, no, no, no, that's all decentralized, and you're like, no, no, no, it's clearly not, right, they need to be able to point to parts of their project that are centralized, and honest people, which are hard to come by, will tell you,

421
00:28:52,470 --> 00:28:59,730
yeah, we're a decentralized protocol, but this part is centralized, this part is centralized, and this part is semi-centralized, and here are the reasons why.

422
00:29:00,370 --> 00:29:02,970
Okay, now at that point, we are armed with information.

423
00:29:02,970 --> 00:29:12,950
You can run it through your personal philosophies and worldviews to see if that's something that you're okay with, but it's definitely something that is rarely talked about.

424
00:29:12,950 --> 00:29:13,970
It's kind of hand-waved away.

425
00:29:13,970 --> 00:29:15,590
Well, no, it's not really centralized.

426
00:29:15,590 --> 00:29:18,170
It is, and they need to be able to explain why.

427
00:29:18,330 --> 00:29:22,410
So talk to your projects, anything that you're interested in.

428
00:29:23,450 --> 00:29:25,590
And what can I learn from history?

429
00:29:25,590 --> 00:29:42,470
There is a huge amount of examples of not just blockchain projects, but open-source projects, business projects, everything, all over the world, where they have failed because of centralization, and some have failed because of decentralization.

430
00:29:42,470 --> 00:29:49,790
There was too many people that you needed to get an approval from to make a decision, and so you missed out on an opportunity, right?

431
00:29:49,790 --> 00:29:58,410
You couldn't get all 10 CEOs to kind of give a check mark, or all 10 powerful board members to give a check mark, either because you couldn't reach them, or they couldn't reach a decision .

432
00:29:58,510 --> 00:30:02,270
So you missed out on a big opportunity, and they go under, right?

433
00:30:02,270 --> 00:30:05,190
So decentralization is not always blanket good.

434
00:30:05,190 --> 00:30:11,270
Sometimes it can keep you from doing things in a quick fashion, but it reduces trust.

435
00:30:11,270 --> 00:30:12,710
So there's a ton of examples.

436
00:30:12,710 --> 00:30:18,270
Please, please, please go look through failed businesses, failed open-source projects, failed blockchain projects.

437
00:30:18,270 --> 00:30:20,670
Try to find out why did they fail?

438
00:30:20,670 --> 00:30:29,430
Oftentimes, one of the underlying issues is that it was either centralized in some way or decentralized in some way that it shouldn't have been.

439
00:30:29,570 --> 00:30:34,790
I'm running short on time, so conclusion summary in closing.

440
00:30:34,950 --> 00:30:36,910
Decentralization is this big buzzword.

441
00:30:36,910 --> 00:30:37,150
It doesn't...

442
00:30:38,070 --> 00:30:51,250
we really have to understand what it is, what its goal is, what it's trying to do, because otherwise, when somebody says, oh, this is decentralized, we're just like, oh, yeah, that's great, when really it may not necessarily be that way.

443
00:30:51,530 --> 00:30:53,810
So, yeah.

444
00:30:54,110 --> 00:30:56,030
That's my last slide.

445
00:30:56,030 --> 00:30:57,790
That's my last second.

446
00:30:57,790 --> 00:30:59,270
It's 430.

447
00:30:59,270 --> 00:30:59,970
My time.

448
00:30:59,970 --> 00:31:01,210
I'm an hour ahead of Las Vegas.

449
00:31:01,210 --> 00:31:04,130
So it's time for me to back on out of here.

450
00:31:04,130 --> 00:31:08,490
If you have any questions, I will be chilling around in the Discord.

451
00:31:09,210 --> 00:31:16,470
I'm more than happy to talk with you guys about decentralization, what I think about various projects and what they claim about decentralization, blah, blah, blah.

452
00:31:17,050 --> 00:31:18,790
So that's it for me.

453
00:31:18,790 --> 00:31:22,310
Thanks for coming to my little talk, my DEF CON talk.

454
00:31:23,050 --> 00:31:25,410
I hope you guys enjoy the rest of the conference.

455
00:31:25,410 --> 00:31:27,850
Go check out everything that we have to offer.

456
00:31:28,210 --> 00:31:32,890
Monerovillage.org has the rest of the schedule for the rest of today and tomorrow.

457
00:31:32,890 --> 00:31:34,230
Thank you!

458
00:31:34,230 --> 00:31:34,750
Transcribed by https://otter.ai