"Oh, they've got the technically sound arguments."
They don't ever make any technical arguments because their technical argument is:
*"If you make the data carrier size bigger, there'll be more OP_RETURNs of a size bigger than the limit used to be."*
Like, okay. That's the extent of the technical discussion. It's not a technical debate, guys. We know it. We know it. And I've said it a million times before.
— Bitcoin Mechanic
The distinction between theory and practical decentralization:
many people can call things "decentralized"
but decentralization also requires a system that makes decentralization easier.
email is "decentralized" in theory, but its really not in practice:
- you have to run a server, or rent a server.
- you have to keep the server running.
- you can't switch back and forth between servers/providers without changing your identity.
- you are stuck on your provider.
so this means something decentralized should let you:
- switch between instances without changing your identity.
- should allow you to change providers.
- should allow you to start self hosting anytime without any downsides or effort.
- you shouldn't have to keep a server running 24/7, you should be able to go offline. so you shouldn't need a traditional server. you phone, your pc should be able to be the self hosted provider, that doesnt need 100% uptime.
- it should be easy to participate in the network.
so what is not decentralized in practice?
- matrix
- fediverse (mastadon)
- email
- ethereum
what is decentralized?
- nostr
why?
in nostr your relays are not namespaces for users. users have key pairs, so they can easily change between relays without changing their identity.
a relay is just server that lets you store and query nostr events. and many nostr clients designed to work with many relays, discover relays, and broadcast smartly, so you can use multiple relays at once, you can decide to self host your events at any point.
if you are self hosting, you profile doesnt go down just because your self hosted relay went down. so you can run a relay on your phone using apps like Citrine, and using Orbot you can host it over tor onion addresses for free, from any network. (this can also be built-in in nostr apps in the future)
You can start using Nostr with Primal, and some default public relays. But then you can self-host or change your relay list anytime later. You can backup your events, or events mentioning you, and rebroadcast them if they go missing.
All without being have to start over.
If you have a Gmail, you can't switch to ProtonMail simply. Your address changes, your inbox changes, etc.
You can't switch Matrix instances as well.
You can't switch Fediverse providers without changing everything.
You can't simply start self hosting.
On nostr, you can. It's truly decentralized.