[00:01.550 --> 00:09.770]  Hey, how's it going, everybody? It's me, Rorar Diego, that one kid that you know.
[00:10.470 --> 00:14.610]  You're probably not seeing me as much these days as you would if we were in the physical thing,
[00:14.610 --> 00:17.750]  and I'm running around the village and stuff, but that also means you get to experience all
[00:17.750 --> 00:22.150]  these other things that people do. How's DEF CON been for you guys, huh? Digital.
[00:22.690 --> 00:26.250]  Is this something you'd like to repeat? Is this something you'd like to do another time?
[00:26.370 --> 00:30.510]  I don't know. Hopefully, if we do decide to do it, it's not going to be under the virus
[00:30.510 --> 00:37.110]  situation, but whatever. Daniel Kim's got some good stuff. I've been chilling in the Discord.
[00:37.110 --> 00:41.430]  We have some people hanging out in the voice over there. If you have questions about Monero,
[00:41.430 --> 00:46.390]  or you want to talk about pretty much anything, drop by our Discord in the Monero Village area.
[00:46.390 --> 00:51.190]  We've got a voice chat where at least somebody's usually hanging out from the community to answer
[00:51.190 --> 00:59.910]  questions. Okay. I am set to speak now. I'm set to speak today. I got a little bit of a half hour
[00:59.910 --> 01:04.030]  slot to fill, but this time I don't have to fill it with a bunch of filler, because it's an actual
[01:04.030 --> 01:09.790]  talk that I'm going to be giving. We're going to talk about decentralization in a centralized world.
[01:09.790 --> 01:15.430]  Apologies to all the people tuning in from Europe. I'm spelling it with a Z, which is the American
[01:15.430 --> 01:21.230]  spelling of decentralization and centralized, instead of an S. And when I see it with an S,
[01:21.230 --> 01:26.550]  it makes me cringe inside. So, without further ado, let's go ahead and get started on this.
[01:27.950 --> 01:35.570]  Decentralization. When people hear about blockchain, or when a blockchain project is
[01:35.570 --> 01:41.210]  talking about their project, they're like, yeah, we have these goals of decentralization. We really
[01:41.210 --> 01:45.970]  feel that decentralization is going to make all the difference. And that's one of the things we're
[01:45.970 --> 01:53.190]  working towards on a technological level. And nobody ever stops to ask and think,
[01:53.190 --> 01:58.870]  why? What is the purpose of decentralization? At this point, it's really just kind of this buzzword,
[01:58.870 --> 02:03.490]  right? That they say decentralization, you go, that's good, right? So, if they make that a goal
[02:03.490 --> 02:09.310]  and it's good, then that means that everything's good. But it's not quite that simple. It's not
[02:09.310 --> 02:14.870]  quite that way. If we don't know what decentralization is for, if we don't know why
[02:15.330 --> 02:20.950]  decentralization is a thing, why it's important, and if we don't know, like, the ways to achieve it,
[02:20.950 --> 02:28.530]  then really we're just throwing words on things and nothing gets better. In fact, many things
[02:28.530 --> 02:32.510]  would benefit from not being decentralized. And we're not going to be able to think about this
[02:32.510 --> 02:36.350]  critically and see what things should be decentralized and what things shouldn't be
[02:36.350 --> 02:41.410]  decentralized unless we know really what it's for. So, this is kind of a rundown of what I'm
[02:41.410 --> 02:45.370]  going to be talking about right now. We're going to give some definitions about decentralization
[02:45.910 --> 02:51.070]  and we're going to talk about the different forms that it can take place in. Because there is more
[02:51.070 --> 02:55.930]  than just one form, really. When people say the word decentralization, they mean many, many, many
[02:55.930 --> 03:02.190]  different things. Because it applies to many areas of a cryptocurrency project.
[03:02.670 --> 03:07.110]  We're going to explore some trade-offs. So, when you choose decentralization, it's not all
[03:07.110 --> 03:11.490]  positives. There are negatives that go along with it. And then we're going to look at a practical
[03:11.490 --> 03:19.850]  application and see how that can kind of help us as we look at cryptocurrency projects in general
[03:19.850 --> 03:23.150]  and evaluate them and try to think about them critically to see if they're doing something
[03:23.150 --> 03:29.890]  good or if they're just kind of wasting resources. And yeah, that's where we're going to go. And then
[03:29.890 --> 03:38.810]  from here, depending on time, I may give some light touching on kind of the world as we know it
[03:38.810 --> 03:44.430]  and how we're moving into a more decentralized place. Because pretty much our world is very
[03:44.430 --> 03:53.710]  centralized. As is the name of the talk. So, who am I? I'm Diego Salazar. I contribute to Monero.
[03:53.750 --> 03:58.330]  And that's pretty much everything you need to know about me. There's my Twitter. You can go
[03:58.330 --> 04:05.670]  to my Twitter. I don't do anything on my Twitter. I don't tweet hardly ever. So, yeah. I have long
[04:05.670 --> 04:11.990]  curly hair and some people like that. So, if that's your thing, then give me a thumbs up in chat.
[04:12.710 --> 04:19.050]  Okay. Decentralized. Decentralization. As stated before, this is basically just a new buzzword,
[04:19.050 --> 04:24.530]  right? We have all of these things that have become buzzwords in the world. Blockchain is the
[04:24.530 --> 04:30.010]  name of the game. But it is also a buzzword. Because as Daniel Kim was alluding to in his talk,
[04:30.010 --> 04:36.750]  when people are like, oh, yeah, we're adding blockchain to the automobile industry. And,
[04:36.750 --> 04:41.390]  you know, their socks just shoot way up. At this point, blockchain is a buzzword. Privacy
[04:41.390 --> 04:46.410]  is also a buzzword, right? You have Bitcoin and all these transparency coins are like, oh, yeah,
[04:46.410 --> 04:51.490]  you know, we're not a privacy coin. We're not privacy first, but we're adding privacy.
[04:51.690 --> 04:55.750]  Decentralization is another big buzzword. And it's probably one of the top ones. If you look
[04:55.750 --> 05:00.930]  at almost any cryptocurrency project, I can guarantee you that the word decentralization
[05:00.930 --> 05:07.610]  is going to be somewhere in there. These people, this is they just know that this is desirable,
[05:07.610 --> 05:12.950]  but they don't know why. So, let's go ahead and do the definitions. And like all boring people,
[05:12.950 --> 05:17.930]  when I do definitions, we start with the dictionary. So, decentralization is defined
[05:17.930 --> 05:24.670]  by Merriam-Webster dictionary as the dispersion or distribution of functions and powers.
[05:25.750 --> 05:32.770]  So, then also we're going to define decentralize to move the control of an organization or
[05:32.770 --> 05:38.890]  government from a single place to several smaller ones. And this is defined by the Cambridge
[05:38.890 --> 05:44.190]  dictionary. And I would also expand that definition somewhat so it's not just a single
[05:44.190 --> 05:50.210]  place to several smaller ones. It can really be, you know, from 3 to 5, from 10 to 20,
[05:50.210 --> 05:59.970]  from any smaller number of places to larger number of smaller ones. And so, the word
[05:59.970 --> 06:05.990]  centralize is just the opposite of that, right? We're moving from many places of power or
[06:05.990 --> 06:13.410]  functions and putting them from many different places to less places. In the most extreme case,
[06:13.410 --> 06:19.430]  into one place, right? One person can do it. So, we're going to give an example. We're going
[06:19.430 --> 06:23.950]  to talk about... we're going to move into why would we want to decentralize? What is the point
[06:23.950 --> 06:31.050]  of decentralizing? So, in this example, we all start a club, right? We start a really cool club.
[06:31.050 --> 06:35.990]  We all love Twilight series. We all love the Twilight series. I can't think of a single
[06:35.990 --> 06:41.490]  person on this entire planet that has not read the books, watched the movies, wrote fan fiction,
[06:41.950 --> 06:45.450]  all these things, right? Everybody's crazy about the Twilight series. So, we start our
[06:45.450 --> 06:55.230]  series club. And everyone is either on team Jacob or team Edward. And we need to vote. We need to
[06:55.230 --> 07:00.970]  vote who is going to be the leaders. We need to vote on who's going to be the leader of our club,
[07:00.970 --> 07:05.910]  who's going to be leading this thing. But everybody is in these two very political parties
[07:05.910 --> 07:12.370]  of team Edward or team Jacob. And I am a team Edward fan, maybe. And you're a team Jacob fan,
[07:12.370 --> 07:17.450]  so I don't want the team Jacob people to be in charge because they're going to cover our
[07:17.450 --> 07:24.490]  Twilight clubhouse in team Jacob stuff. And that would be awful. I want Edward posters on the wall.
[07:24.490 --> 07:29.750]  So, I want to make sure that whoever I'm voting for is part of team Edward. So, everybody's gonna
[07:29.750 --> 07:35.930]  vote, right? Let's say we have 20-ish people. Everybody writes their thing on the ballot and
[07:35.930 --> 07:45.110]  we all put it in the box. But here, a problem begins to arise. I jumped a little bit ahead.
[07:45.110 --> 07:51.210]  We have to count these votes. We have to count these votes. And who are we gonna put in charge
[07:51.210 --> 07:56.650]  of these votes? In theory, this voting is anonymous. We don't know who voted what. But
[07:56.650 --> 08:03.170]  does it really matter what anybody voted? And let me tell you why. If we put one person in charge
[08:03.730 --> 08:11.870]  of counting all of the votes, and this person is a team Jacob person, as signified by the J here,
[08:11.870 --> 08:17.270]  then they could just, like, either not really count the votes or count them but not really
[08:17.270 --> 08:25.150]  care and say, oh, Jacob won. This guy from team Jacob won. And we would all have to trust this
[08:25.150 --> 08:32.310]  person because we didn't count the votes. Right? And this is just not something that we want to
[08:32.310 --> 08:37.750]  do. So this is on one end of the extreme, where we get one person to do it. On the other end of
[08:37.750 --> 08:44.150]  the extreme, we get everybody to stay. Everybody is staying here to count the votes. But the kids
[08:44.150 --> 08:49.250]  are getting tired. And it's been a long day for me. I want to get home. I don't want to stay here
[08:49.250 --> 08:54.870]  and count all these votes. The only way to be absolutely sure with zero trust of who won this
[08:54.870 --> 09:02.130]  is if everybody, absolutely everybody stays, and everybody takes out each vote, looks at it,
[09:02.130 --> 09:05.670]  passes it around, and everybody's watching everybody else to make sure we're not doing
[09:05.670 --> 09:11.090]  some sneaky substitutions or anything like that. Right? So everybody has to stay. Everybody has
[09:11.090 --> 09:15.270]  to look at each vote and keep their own tally. Then we compare our tallies to each other. And
[09:15.270 --> 09:22.010]  if we all come up with the same thing, then there is 100% assurance with zero trust that we have a
[09:22.010 --> 09:27.550]  correct vote. That's the other end of the extreme. But that requires everybody to take their Saturday
[09:27.550 --> 09:33.550]  to stay here. And we don't want to stay here. But as we just discussed in this first example,
[09:33.550 --> 09:38.010]  if we have just this one person here, well, they can go ahead and report whatever they want,
[09:38.010 --> 09:44.170]  and we would never be the wiser. So what else can we do? Well, we can decentralize. So from
[09:44.170 --> 09:51.870]  this one person, we've now moved to two people. Right? And in this case, we're hoping... we're
[09:51.870 --> 09:58.190]  hoping that one is Team Edward, one is Team Jacob. So that way, we know for sure that, you know,
[09:58.190 --> 10:01.770]  they're not gonna collaborate. Because what if they're both Team Jacob? Then they're like, okay,
[10:01.770 --> 10:09.110]  so we both want Team Jacob to win. So we're going to agree together that we're not gonna really care
[10:09.110 --> 10:12.970]  about the actual vote count. This is just what we're going to be reporting. So we have to kind
[10:12.970 --> 10:17.210]  of make sure that we get somebody who's on Team Edward and somebody else who's on Team Jacob.
[10:17.210 --> 10:22.650]  So that way, when they count the votes, if one person tries to lie, the other person is
[10:23.070 --> 10:28.230]  incentivized to say, no, that's not true. No, that's not true. But there are some attacks that
[10:28.230 --> 10:34.190]  can happen here as well. This is not a bulletproof, foolproof kind of thing. Because what if one of
[10:34.190 --> 10:37.810]  two things happen? I've got a couple examples. What if the guy that is known as Team Edward
[10:37.810 --> 10:45.530]  is actually a secret closet Team Jacob guy? Right? He doesn't tell anybody. He's actually
[10:45.530 --> 10:53.070]  changed teams recently. Or he's been convinced by a family member. Or he's just lying for whatever
[10:53.070 --> 10:59.130]  reason. And he is converted to Team Jacob. Now we have two Team Jacob people. And it's the same
[10:59.130 --> 11:02.550]  thing that I discussed. They're just gonna agree, okay, it doesn't matter what the vote is.
[11:02.550 --> 11:08.370]  We're just gonna say that the Team Jacob guy wins. Alternatively, another scenario is the
[11:08.370 --> 11:13.550]  first Team Jacob person is quite wealthy or powerful or has a lot of resources. And they're
[11:13.550 --> 11:21.450]  able to say, hey, I will give you money, resources, whatever you want, if you agree with me that it
[11:21.450 --> 11:27.090]  doesn't matter what the vote is. We just agree Team Jacob wins. And maybe this person cares more
[11:27.090 --> 11:35.070]  about the resources than about their allegiance to any particular team. So, they are persuaded.
[11:35.670 --> 11:39.210]  Well, let's try to decentralize even further. Because we don't want any of those attacks to
[11:39.210 --> 11:43.230]  happen. We want to make sure that this is a fair election. So, we decentralize even further.
[11:44.110 --> 11:48.530]  And we say, okay, we got four people now. Hopefully two of them Team Edward, two of them
[11:48.530 --> 11:54.850]  Team Jacob. But now we get to some really interesting kind of game theory things that
[11:54.850 --> 12:02.490]  are happening here. Because what if we're able to get one person to our side? Either through
[12:02.490 --> 12:06.070]  either of the ways that we were talking about before, where we were able to convince them
[12:06.070 --> 12:11.090]  through resources or they were a secret agent all along, whatever the case may be. Now we're kind of
[12:11.090 --> 12:16.510]  this three against one scenario. And these three people can threaten this person. Hey, if you don't
[12:16.510 --> 12:23.130]  keep quiet about this or if you don't do what we say, then we're gonna burn all your posters,
[12:23.130 --> 12:26.670]  in real life scenarios it can be things like they can threaten violence, they can threaten
[12:26.670 --> 12:31.050]  family resources, whatever. And now this person is gonna have to go along with them because they
[12:31.050 --> 12:37.870]  have the numbers advantage. So, we've decentralized into a place where in theory it's like, okay,
[12:37.870 --> 12:42.510]  four people is good. But not everybody has to stay and waste their time counting all of the votes.
[12:42.710 --> 12:48.530]  But we have enough people that we can trust that nobody's gonna do anything weird. But in this
[12:48.530 --> 12:55.190]  scenario, it's not enough. So, we can do this again and again and again and again until we're
[12:55.890 --> 13:04.310]  all the way back to everybody having to stay to count the votes. So, if you're seeing a pattern
[13:04.310 --> 13:11.110]  here, I hope you're seeing a pattern here. And this pattern is that the more we trust people,
[13:11.790 --> 13:18.170]  the more convenient it is for everybody. Because if we only have one person counting those votes,
[13:18.170 --> 13:23.070]  that's a lot of trust placed in that individual. But it's the only person inconvenienced is that
[13:23.070 --> 13:26.610]  one person. It's much more convenient for everybody else. They get to go home and watch
[13:26.610 --> 13:35.690]  television, right? And the less trust we have, the more inconvenient it is for everybody. And this
[13:35.690 --> 13:42.930]  is basically decentralization in a nutshell. This is going to apply everywhere across the board.
[13:42.930 --> 13:47.990]  When we look at blockchain, we are decentralizing a database, right? It's just a database that has
[13:47.990 --> 13:53.290]  ledger information that says this person has this much money and this person has this much money.
[13:53.290 --> 13:58.590]  But we're decentralizing it. So, it's now not on just one server where we have to trust the system
[13:58.590 --> 14:02.370]  administrator is not going to do anything bad with that. Or maybe they're not malicious, but
[14:02.370 --> 14:08.290]  they're incompetent. And so, hackers get in and they mess with the database. No. We give the
[14:08.290 --> 14:14.490]  blockchain, we give this database to whoever wants it. And now because everybody has it, we don't
[14:14.490 --> 14:22.030]  have to trust anybody. So, if I'm like, oh, do I have an accurate copy of the blockchain? I can
[14:22.030 --> 14:29.310]  compare it to many of my peers and say, okay, yes, it agrees with all of them. So, we're all good.
[14:29.310 --> 14:35.710]  We're all fine. But it's much more inefficient. It's much more inconvenient. Because if you want
[14:35.710 --> 14:39.810]  the most trustless option, you have to download the whole blockchain onto your computer.
[14:40.450 --> 14:46.370]  Now, you have to take up your hard drive space, your bandwidth, your everything to be absolutely
[14:46.370 --> 14:51.970]  trustless. And when we start thinking about the fact that this is always going to be the tradeoff,
[14:51.970 --> 14:57.930]  the more we decentralize, the more inefficient it is, the more inconvenient it is,
[14:57.930 --> 15:04.270]  we need to start asking the question, what things need to be trustless? This is the core question.
[15:04.270 --> 15:08.770]  What things need to be trustless? Because those are the things that definitely we can
[15:08.770 --> 15:15.830]  start to decentralize. Knowing that there is going to be a cost. But not everything does
[15:15.830 --> 15:22.210]  need to be trustless. When we start thinking, okay, to give a very stupid example, and sorry
[15:22.210 --> 15:29.030]  to call people out here, there was a coin back in the 2017 boom called CampusCoin. And the idea
[15:29.030 --> 15:35.010]  was that CampusCoin was a cryptocurrency that students would be able to use to pay tuition
[15:35.010 --> 15:41.790]  or their meal plans or all these things, right? So we're trying to make paying our tuition and
[15:41.790 --> 15:47.690]  paying for our meal plans for our students a trustless endeavor. And I just didn't see or
[15:47.690 --> 15:53.210]  hear the outcry of students that were like, these universities are cheating me. I paid the money,
[15:53.210 --> 15:58.750]  and they said they never received it. I don't trust them. We need to make sure that they're
[15:58.750 --> 16:02.910]  in check. We need to make sure that this is a whole trustless kind of thing. I didn't see this,
[16:02.910 --> 16:10.310]  right? This is something that does not need to be trustless. Same with Dentacoin, paying dentists,
[16:10.310 --> 16:15.090]  right? How many people have been defrauded by their dentist? I mean, maybe there's some of you,
[16:15.090 --> 16:20.070]  and you might raise your hand and say, I see a need for Dentacoin. But I think for the majority
[16:20.070 --> 16:24.230]  of us, we're able to pay them and they're like, thank you for your money. Here's your teeth
[16:24.230 --> 16:31.410]  cleaning, and we're good. So kind of in this whole blockchain area, it makes sense in some
[16:31.410 --> 16:40.570]  spaces. For example, distributed ledger technology. There is strong motivation for people to try to
[16:40.570 --> 16:46.990]  mess with money information. Why? Because I can become a millionaire or a billionaire overnight
[16:47.460 --> 16:51.730]  if I have the capability to mess with the money situation. Or I can be malicious against somebody
[16:51.730 --> 16:56.330]  else, and they have $100, and now they have $0. There's strong incentive. Money is such a strong
[16:56.330 --> 17:02.150]  incentive. So kind of this ledger-based information, there is a lot of reason why we
[17:02.150 --> 17:09.410]  would want to trust people less. So we may be able and willing to decentralize, become more inefficient
[17:10.670 --> 17:18.350]  so that way we can trust people less. But I mean, we just can't do that for everything.
[17:20.270 --> 17:25.210]  But here's the big thing about decentralization in terms of blockchain.
[17:25.870 --> 17:31.650]  It's, as I alluded to earlier, it's not just one thing. When somebody says, we are a decentralized
[17:31.650 --> 17:37.170]  project, which you hear pretty much everywhere, what does this mean? We're going to start kind
[17:37.170 --> 17:43.030]  of poking into many of the ways that a project can be decentralized. One way, who writes the code?
[17:43.030 --> 17:48.110]  Okay. So all of these wallets, all of this protocol, all this stuff needs to
[17:48.110 --> 17:56.210]  be written by some entity. Usually, like pretty much always by people, right? Who is actually
[17:56.210 --> 18:03.150]  writing this code? Is it one person? Is it 10 people? Maybe they have 20 CEOs and one engineer
[18:03.150 --> 18:08.110]  that's actually writing the code. Is this decentralized? They have 20 CEOs, so 20 people
[18:08.110 --> 18:13.890]  looking over making sure the project is okay, or 20 people in high CT positions, CEO, CTO,
[18:13.890 --> 18:17.170]  these kinds of things, right? But they don't know the code well enough to be able to check
[18:17.170 --> 18:21.910]  on this guy or whatever. So functionally, there's one person who is writing this code.
[18:22.430 --> 18:27.330]  And he has no oversight, which means that this person can put back doors inside. They can,
[18:27.330 --> 18:32.370]  you know, they can do whatever they want. And nobody's going to be around to stop them.
[18:32.370 --> 18:37.490]  Who's writing the code? Finances. Who has the money? Who's distributing the money?
[18:37.490 --> 18:43.690]  If there's one guy or just a very small team of people who is handling the money of a project,
[18:43.690 --> 18:49.050]  then they can choose... it gets a little subtle here, and it gets a little not quite so on the
[18:49.050 --> 18:56.310]  nose, but they can hire engineers that maybe they're less than scrupulous, or maybe they're
[18:56.310 --> 19:01.890]  hiring engineers that are incompetent, or maybe they're hiring engineers that adhere to a certain
[19:01.890 --> 19:07.310]  design philosophy and not to another one, so they don't have to have as much infighting to get
[19:07.310 --> 19:12.590]  the... to get the project to go in the direction that they want it to go, rather than another
[19:12.590 --> 19:17.510]  direction. This kind of stuff is important, because when we're talking about decentralization,
[19:17.510 --> 19:22.530]  trusting less, are we just like, you know, the development one is the one that's most well known.
[19:22.530 --> 19:26.010]  Who's writing the code? How many eyes are on the code? But the same thing with money.
[19:26.010 --> 19:30.670]  How many eyes are on the money? How many eyes are on the money? Who's paying to either hire
[19:30.670 --> 19:35.870]  somebody or fire somebody or to get this research done? What if, you know, there's two
[19:36.870 --> 19:41.230]  papers, two research papers that are done for two different, totally different directions,
[19:41.230 --> 19:46.050]  that we can take a coin in terms of evolving the protocol? Well, the person with the finances
[19:46.050 --> 19:52.270]  decides to fund an audit for one of those papers, but not the other. Once that audit is complete,
[19:52.270 --> 19:58.270]  they can say, look, this way has been audited, and they said it was good. This other one is
[19:58.270 --> 20:02.390]  unaudited, so I really don't think we should do that. Well, just like that, you have influenced
[20:02.550 --> 20:08.190]  a community because of money decisions. So it's also, decentralization also needs to take place
[20:08.190 --> 20:12.810]  kind of on a financial level. If there's only one group or a small group of people that has
[20:12.810 --> 20:16.150]  all of the money, that's something you also need to watch out for.
[20:16.910 --> 20:24.030]  Research. Who's doing the research? Because, you know, just as I alluded to in the audit thing,
[20:24.030 --> 20:27.670]  perhaps a researcher comes across two or three different ways that things can go,
[20:27.670 --> 20:30.490]  you know, evolve from a cryptographic perspective, and they decide to really
[20:30.490 --> 20:34.090]  pour their all into one of them that they think is the best and not put as much effort into the
[20:34.090 --> 20:39.630]  other ones. They're going to have a lot more. Do we trust this researcher? And many times,
[20:40.090 --> 20:44.350]  many times, yes. Many times we think they're not malicious, right? But we can never be
[20:44.350 --> 20:48.550]  absolutely positively sure. When we're talking about decentralization, when we're talking about
[20:48.550 --> 20:52.870]  making things trustless, it's not just on the code. It's not just on the money. It's also on
[20:52.870 --> 21:00.550]  the science. Who's doing the science? And practical stuff. Practical stuff. Who's running
[21:00.550 --> 21:08.150]  the day-to-day? Who's running the community management stuff? All of these are ways. All
[21:08.150 --> 21:12.850]  of these are ways that decentralization needs to be looked at. So, when a project says,
[21:12.850 --> 21:19.110]  we are a decentralized project, maybe they mean in one way, like we have several different
[21:19.110 --> 21:22.610]  engineers or we're open source. Usually what they mean is we're open source, which means
[21:22.610 --> 21:27.210]  there are several eyeballs on the project. But when you start digging deeper, you're like, oh,
[21:27.210 --> 21:32.770]  but we do have a small group of scientists that's pretty impenetrable. Like, as in, it's hard for
[21:32.770 --> 21:37.090]  you to do your own research. And they're the ones that do the majority of the research. Oh,
[21:37.090 --> 21:41.530]  who handles the money? Oh, well, see, we've got this little group that's responsible for that.
[21:41.530 --> 21:45.010]  What kind of oversight do they have? Oh, we just we make sure they do good stuff. So,
[21:45.010 --> 21:51.630]  they start hand-waving a lot of the centralized areas. They start hand-waving away a lot of the
[21:51.630 --> 21:55.550]  centralized the ways that they are centralized. And they're like, and we want you to only focus
[21:55.550 --> 22:01.830]  on the fact that our development is decentralized. Here's what I'm not gonna take a lot of time to
[22:01.830 --> 22:05.650]  get into, but mining, centralization, decentralization. This is something that,
[22:05.650 --> 22:10.510]  you know, Monero tried to do with RandomX. Asics tend to lead to centralization of mining over
[22:10.910 --> 22:16.230]  a period of time to particular people that are able to create new Asics and stuff. And
[22:16.230 --> 22:20.730]  we don't have time to go over in that. Daniel Kim has kind of discussed this in his talk.
[22:20.930 --> 22:25.950]  So, I would give that a look. But basically, the goal is to explain to you guys that there
[22:25.950 --> 22:30.550]  are many ways that something is decentralized. And particularly when a project is centralized
[22:30.550 --> 22:36.590]  in many areas, I would even say in most areas, they do their best to divert attention to the
[22:36.590 --> 22:41.910]  areas, very few, that do exist where they are decentralized. And that's usually the protocol
[22:41.910 --> 22:46.330]  level. Because blockchain by design is pretty much decentralized as long as there's miners and
[22:46.330 --> 22:49.530]  stuff. Like, it's just the way that it is. And they'll point all eyeballs to that and say,
[22:49.530 --> 22:54.190]  see, we're decentralized when really everything else is centralized. So, we've gone through the
[22:54.190 --> 22:59.650]  what. What is it? We gave some definitions. We've gone through the where, right? It can be mining.
[23:00.730 --> 23:04.830]  It could be development. We've gone through the why. Why would we want to decentralize? Because
[23:04.830 --> 23:10.270]  we want to reduce trust. Now, we need to talk about the how. And so, to discuss the how,
[23:10.270 --> 23:16.050]  I'm going to say that I start a new project. This new project, SaveTheMarmots.com. It's not a real
[23:16.050 --> 23:20.870]  website. I mean, maybe it is. You can go there and check. But it's not something I've created.
[23:21.070 --> 23:25.710]  But we're gonna say I've started a new project. SaveTheMarmots.com. And you come in and you say,
[23:25.710 --> 23:31.070]  okay, I want to judge whether this project is worth my time. I want to judge whether this
[23:31.070 --> 23:37.550]  project is worth my attention, my money, whatever the case. Whatever this cause is for. I want to
[23:37.550 --> 23:43.410]  make sure that I'm not gonna be wasting any of my resources on this. So, SaveTheMarmots. And I say,
[23:43.410 --> 23:46.570]  it's very decentralized. It's very decentralized. And so, you're like, ooh, decentralized,
[23:46.570 --> 23:51.470]  that sounds good. So, that's a couple points in its favor. I may put some money in there.
[23:51.590 --> 23:55.170]  But we gotta ask the big questions. We gotta ask the big question.
[23:56.470 --> 24:03.690]  First of all, does this need to be decentralized? This is always, always, always, always the first
[24:03.690 --> 24:09.150]  big question that you should ask yourself. When they say, we are revolutionizing the real estate
[24:09.150 --> 24:16.810]  industry, the automobile industry, the trash picking up industry, the dentist industry.
[24:16.950 --> 24:23.090]  We're decentralizing all of these industries. We need to start thinking. Critical thinking.
[24:23.090 --> 24:28.170]  Does this need to be decentralized? Is this something that would benefit from a reduction
[24:28.170 --> 24:33.730]  of trust? Is this something where all the parties don't trust each other? Is this something where
[24:33.730 --> 24:39.210]  we would be willing to tolerate the inefficiencies? What are the inefficiencies? They may not be as
[24:39.210 --> 24:44.890]  neat on the surface. So, for blockchain, the inefficiency is it requires proof of work,
[24:44.890 --> 24:48.710]  which requires electrical consumption. It requires power to secure the blockchain.
[24:48.710 --> 24:52.970]  It requires the database to be on everybody's computer. That's a lot of space.
[24:53.110 --> 24:57.370]  So, for blockchain, we might know what those are. But if we start looking at decentralizing
[24:57.370 --> 25:01.950]  other industries, we may not know, it may not be readily apparent to us,
[25:01.950 --> 25:06.390]  what are the inefficiencies that are going to come from decentralizing something?
[25:07.370 --> 25:12.090]  We need to start asking the big question. Does this need to be decentralized?
[25:13.050 --> 25:18.670]  But there are a few other smaller questions that we can ask. Because that's a big question,
[25:18.670 --> 25:23.470]  and it's probably the most important. And maybe they're able to give you a good reason why they
[25:23.470 --> 25:28.030]  think that this should be decentralized. They'll typically say, there is a good use case for this.
[25:28.730 --> 25:33.790]  Usually it's a bunch of bullshit. But that's what they'll say. There's a good use case for this.
[25:33.930 --> 25:38.850]  But there's a bunch of smaller questions that we can use to tease out whether, A, this thing needs
[25:38.850 --> 25:43.510]  to be decentralized, and B, whether the project itself is decentralized. For example, who do I
[25:43.510 --> 25:49.870]  talk to to get information? Who do I need to approach? Who do I need to talk to to get any
[25:49.870 --> 26:01.630]  information about this product? If it is largely contained within one website, one person,
[26:01.630 --> 26:07.330]  one department, right? If it's only a small group of people that is able to give you accurate
[26:07.330 --> 26:12.790]  information about this, then that means that for the most part, the information is going to be
[26:12.790 --> 26:17.590]  coming from a select group that's going to tell you what you want to hear. Are there dissenting
[26:17.590 --> 26:24.110]  viewpoints? Are those dissenting viewpoints given a platform? Assuming they're not trying to spread
[26:24.110 --> 26:31.430]  misinformation, which I really feel sorry for everyone in this day and age of social media,
[26:31.430 --> 26:35.410]  where there's so much misinformation everywhere, there's so much noise, it's really hard to
[26:35.410 --> 26:40.370]  distinguish between what is signal and what is noise, but that is another talk in and of itself.
[26:40.710 --> 26:45.670]  But are these dissenters who have different ideas that are, in theory, in a perfect world,
[26:45.670 --> 26:50.370]  presented in a respectful manner, and they have good points, and they address people's points
[26:50.370 --> 26:56.850]  and stuff, are these people given a platform, or are they silenced? If they are silenced,
[26:56.850 --> 27:01.630]  then that says that this is a pretty centralized thing, because you need a certain amount of power
[27:01.630 --> 27:09.190]  to silence these people. If we look at Bitcoin and BTC, from the subreddit perspective,
[27:09.190 --> 27:13.190]  there was a group of people that didn't like the Bitcoin subreddit, so they made their own.
[27:13.330 --> 27:17.490]  They made BTC. And regardless of what you think about these two subreddits, I don't really care
[27:17.490 --> 27:22.370]  what you think about these things, but these voices were not silenced, and they couldn't be
[27:22.370 --> 27:27.430]  silenced. In one area, they were, but they were very easily able to build a following, build a
[27:27.430 --> 27:33.590]  community of people who disagreed with the first one. Whereas many people, those things get
[27:33.590 --> 27:39.910]  attacked, those places get shut down. It's really bad if you start getting like some cease and
[27:39.910 --> 27:44.250]  desist letters that shows, okay, these people really do own pretty much everything, and it's
[27:44.250 --> 27:52.090]  not decentralized at all. Question two, what is centralized, and why? So this is a bit of a
[27:52.090 --> 27:56.550]  this is a bit of a funky thing that I'm going to throw in here. It's probably best
[27:57.430 --> 28:03.450]  no, let me let me take a step back. Maybe not probably best. Some projects may choose to
[28:03.450 --> 28:11.210]  centralize some things, and we need to understand why they do that, because maybe that's the way to
[28:11.210 --> 28:17.470]  go. For example, payments. Maybe it's just easier to get people paid on time in terms of researchers
[28:17.470 --> 28:21.950]  who decide they can devote their time and energy to this, or engineers, or people who are going to
[28:21.950 --> 28:26.650]  code full-time. They say, you know what, we have decided to centralize the way we do our finances
[28:26.650 --> 28:31.750]  so we can pay people on time so they don't leave us. If they can give you a reason for their
[28:32.150 --> 28:36.650]  centralization, now at that point, you can kind of decide for yourself, well, is this kind of worth
[28:36.650 --> 28:42.450]  the trust? Maybe, maybe not. But if they're like, oh, no, no, no, that's all decentralized, and
[28:42.450 --> 28:47.650]  you're like, no, no, no, it's clearly not, right, they need to be able to point to parts of their
[28:47.650 --> 28:52.690]  project that are centralized, and honest people, which are hard to come by, will tell you, yeah,
[28:52.690 --> 28:56.190]  we're a decentralized protocol, but this part is centralized, this part is centralized, and this
[28:56.190 --> 29:01.970]  part is semi-centralized, and here are the reasons why. Okay, now at that point, we are armed
[29:01.970 --> 29:07.350]  with information. You can run it through your personal philosophies and worldviews to see if
[29:07.350 --> 29:12.950]  that's something that you're okay with, but it's definitely something that is rarely talked about.
[29:12.950 --> 29:16.950]  It's kind of hand-waved away. Well, no, it's not really centralized. It is, and they need to be
[29:16.950 --> 29:24.410]  able to explain why. So talk to your projects, anything that you're interested in. And what can
[29:24.410 --> 29:30.790]  I learn from history? There is a huge amount of examples of not just blockchain projects, but
[29:30.790 --> 29:36.850]  open-source projects, business projects, everything, all over the world, where they have failed
[29:37.430 --> 29:43.210]  because of centralization, and some have failed because of decentralization. There was too many
[29:43.210 --> 29:48.190]  people that you needed to get an approval from to make a decision, and so you missed out on an
[29:48.190 --> 29:54.550]  opportunity, right? You couldn't get all 10 CEOs to kind of give a check mark, or all 10 powerful
[29:54.550 --> 29:58.170]  board members to give a check mark, either because you couldn't reach them, or they couldn't reach a
[29:58.170 --> 30:03.970]  decision. So you missed out on a big opportunity, and they go under, right? So decentralization is
[30:03.970 --> 30:10.570]  not always blanket good. Sometimes it can keep you from doing things in a quick fashion, but it
[30:10.570 --> 30:15.730]  reduces trust. So there's a ton of examples. Please, please, please go look through failed businesses,
[30:15.730 --> 30:20.670]  failed open-source projects, failed blockchain projects. Try to find out why did they fail?
[30:20.670 --> 30:27.150]  Oftentimes, one of the underlying issues is that it was either centralized in some way or
[30:27.150 --> 30:32.030]  decentralized in some way that it shouldn't have been. I'm running short on time, so
[30:33.290 --> 30:37.150]  conclusion summary in closing. Decentralization is this big buzzword. It doesn't...
[30:38.070 --> 30:43.430]  we really have to understand what it is, what its goal is, what it's trying to do,
[30:44.430 --> 30:47.890]  because otherwise, when somebody says, oh, this is decentralized, we're just like, oh, yeah, that's
[30:47.890 --> 30:56.510]  great, when really it may not necessarily be that way. So, yeah. That's my last slide. That's my
[30:56.510 --> 31:03.750]  last second. It's 430. My time. I'm an hour ahead of Las Vegas. So it's time for me to back on out
[31:03.750 --> 31:09.990]  of here. If you have any questions, I will be chilling around in the Discord. I'm more than
[31:09.990 --> 31:14.630]  happy to talk with you guys about decentralization, what I think about various projects and what they
[31:14.630 --> 31:20.030]  claim about decentralization, blah, blah, blah. So that's it for me. Thanks for coming to my little
[31:20.030 --> 31:26.210]  talk, my DEF CON talk. I hope you guys enjoy the rest of the conference. Go check out everything
[31:26.210 --> 31:32.190]  that we have to offer. Monerovillage.org has the rest of the schedule for the rest of today and
[31:32.190 --> 31:34.230]  tomorrow. Thank you!
[31:34.230 --> 31:34.750]  Transcribed by https://otter.ai