<center> # My Views on Decentralization *Originally published 2021/12/08 on docs.sweeting.me/s/blog* </center> - decentralized storage layers with centralized regulation / reputation = good - fully decentralized deregulated markets with DAO regulation = bad (you're building libertarianism, which imo should be allowed... but limited to small opt-in island nations, otherwise you're just freeloading and whining) - decentralization does not free you from bad actors, it just makes their behavior more obfuscated and harder to regulate - there is no such thing as "trustless", you're just trusting a layer that's not immediately visible until it fails or turns against you - there is no such thing as "zero knowledge" no matter how much fancy zksnarking and onion routing you do, you're just making the knowledge harder to find (through side-channels only available to those with the most power and money to do expensive analysis / find you and beat you with a wrench) - distributed systems fail in complex ways, and all systems are distributed systems. centralize your state and remove some of that complexity in favor of more predictable failure modes - if you design a fully fully decentralized system with 00000 attempt at some modest means for [central moderation](https://docs.sweeting.me/s/so-you-want-to-build-a-social-network) or at least de-ranking of bad content, I do lose some small respect for you. even torrents have trackers with reputation and ban lists / content policies. if you try to go full-fully 0-moderation it just reliably attracts, and dissproportionately enables some awful shit. ## Required Reading Do not attempt to design a decentralized system without reading, understanding, and internalizing these articles first. - https://docs.sweeting.me/s/so-you-want-to-build-a-social-network - https://monadical.com/posts/Trustless-is-A-Myth.html - https://apenwarr.ca/log/20211201 - https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm - https://maxread.substack.com/p/is-web3-bullshit - https://yesterweb.org/no-to-web3/index.html - https://mnot.github.io/avoiding-internet-centralization/draft-nottingham-avoiding-internet-centralization.html#name-the-limits-of-decentralizat