What is Decentralization to You?

This story was written by
Justin Kuepper
May 09, 2022

One of the primary benefits of cryptocurrencies over conventional currencies is decentralization. By removing intermediaries, cryptocurrencies enable two parties to transact without having to trust a third party intermediary. For example, you can pay a stranger online without going through a bank and ensure a tamper-proof, verifiable transaction record.

The crypto community is applying these same principles to financial services and other markets through innovations like decentralized finance (DeFi) and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs). As these concepts become more and more ubiquitous, it’s crucial for crypto investors and enthusiasts to understand decentralization on a conceptual level.

Let’s take a closer look at decentralization, why it’s so important in the cryptocurrency space, and some challenges that continue to face the industry.

Decentralization enables trustless and tamper-proof transactions that don’t rely on any single intermediary.

Why Decentralization Matters

Satoshi Nakamoto published the original Bitcoin whitepaper in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. After the Federal Reserve’s bailouts, the need for decentralized currencies became apparent, where a single entity couldn’t make decisions affecting everyone. Instead, Satoshi envisioned a global currency run by and for the people.

There are several benefits of decentralization:

• Trustless – Each member of a decentralized blockchain network has a copy of a distributed ledger, making it easy to verify transactions without trusting a central intermediary (e.g., a random stranger on the internet).
• Tamper-proof – Every blockchain transaction is logged on a distributed ledger and verified by the network, making it impossible to alter transactions or corrupt data. It also guarantees that there won’t be any inflation or changes to a cryptocurrency’s value.
• Robust – Decentralization improves robustness by reducing reliance on any single member, making networks less likely to fail and securing them against most attacks. In other words, there’s far less risk of a catastrophic data breach.

Of course, decentralization has its drawbacks. The biggest drawback is that decentralized networks are slower because they rely on consensus among many members. For example, Visa processes about 1,700 transactions per second while Bitcoin can process less than five transactions per second. However, there are some innovative ways around these limitations, such as Layer-2 blockchains.

Decentralization as a Spectrum

Many people label systems as being either centralized or decentralized, but in reality, it’s a spectrum. For example, distributed systems spread data across multiple data centers owned by a network provider. These systems are decentralized because the data isn’t in a single location but also centralized because a single company owns them.

There are trade-offs between each of these network architectures. For instance, centralized systems are faster and more scalable, while decentralized systems are more secure and anonymous. Ultimately, the right network architecture decision comes down to the use case—there is no single solution that’s best for every problem.

How to Measure Decentralization

You can measure decentralization by looking at the number of nodes and the distribution of responsibilities across nodes. For example, Bitcoin has more than 15,000 nodes, with the top five pools controlling 52% of the hash rate, making it highly decentralized. That makes it more decentralized than Litecoin with its 1,300 nodes and 66% hash share across three pools.

The process of measuring decentralization differs between consensus mechanisms:

• Proof-of-Work – The decentralization of proof-of-work blockchains depends on the number of nodes, hash rate, and the hash rate distribution among the nodes. As more nodes join and the hash rate increases, the network becomes more decentralized and harder for any single participant to disrupt.
• Proof-of-Stake – The decentralization of proof-of-stake blockchains depends on the number of stake pools or validators, the distribution of supply tokens across them, and the staked token supply percentage. As the percentage of staked tokens increases, the network becomes more decentralized and difficult to disrupt.

Of course, there are limits to decentralization with both approaches. Proof-of-work consensus mechanisms require more and more computational power over time, which becomes less and less affordable to maintain for individuals. The result is more centralization over time as only larger entities can afford the rising computational power requirements.

Proof-of-stake consensus mechanisms don’t cost more as they scale, but forgers receive rewards proportional to their staked value. As a result, influential participants on the blockchain will become even more significant contributors over time. Like with PoW blockchains, this can lead to lower levels of decentralization as time progresses.

Trends Toward Decentralization

The crypto community continues to push decentralization into new and exciting use cases. Beyond cryptocurrencies, the community hopes to apply decentralized blockchain and smart contract concepts across financial services and even governance. As with Bitcoin’s original intent, the goal is to democratize these services.

The two most significant innovations include:

• Decentralized Exchanges (DEX) – DEXs are peer-to-peer marketplaces where transactions occur directly between traders rather than through a centralized intermediary. Using smart contracts, they algorithmically establish prices based on supply and demand and use “liquidity pools” to facilitate trades.
• Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAO) – DAOs are organizations without a central leader making decisions. Instead, they use smart contracts and governance tokens to vote on decisions. They’re often used to decide on project infrastructure or determine how token supplies are managed and spent.

Cryptocurrencies are also exploring ways to become more decentralized by looking beyond proof-of-work and proof-of-stake consensus mechanisms. For example, an extended proof-of-stake mechanism could replace actual stakes with a percentage stake to mitigate the centralization of forgers while improving security and efficiency.

Finally, cryptocurrency projects also continue to explore ways to improve performance and compete with conventional centralized networks. For instance, sidechains and other off-chain transactions can help increase transactions per second, reduce gas fees, and better compete with centralized services, bringing the power of decentralization to more use cases.

The Bottom Line

Decentralization is core to crypto principles and their underlying technologies. While there are pros and cons to decentralization, the community continues to work toward decentralizing everything from crypto trading to governance. Meanwhile, the performance of cryptocurrencies is getting closer to their centralized peers.