"...the current advantages and disadvantages of decentralization speak for themselves at this point."
Art has not imitated life to the extent living things are far more than minimally decentralized. In the crypto ecosystem, advantages of centralization are a reflection of the complexity of the system - which is rapidly advancing atm - and the simplicity of the current system favors high centralization, because that enables control of the use of the coin to maintain and increase it's utility, which encourages it's adoption.
IRL, nutrient flows are extraordinarily diverse, as are means of tapping them. The vast majority of living things are the most decentralized organisms that can exist: single cells. Macrobiological creatures, however, maintain their niche in the ecosystem by succeeding at most efficiently acquiring the resources they are evolved to capture, and dominate ecosystems in terms of biomass.
Cryptocurrencies aren't the initial beginning of life, long preceded by glass beads, gold, stone wheels, and beaver pelts, but the present explosion of forms and kinds of money in some ways resembles the Cambrian Explosion, in which living things suddenly produced an almost infinite diversity of designs (after billions of relatively gradual evolutionary changes), with one researcher (Stephen J. Gould, IIRC) positing that some species tried as many as 70k sexes, for example. That turned out to be an impractical mechanism for enabling evolution to adapt species to environments, and it turned out that two sexes proved optimal for that.
Crypto has a way to go before that myriad diversity of experiments demonstrates certain features, like body plans in living things by which we categorize them cladistically today, are optimal and necessary to almost all coins, like sexual reproduction is well established in living species today. Even sexual reproduction, however, isn't universal. Various species are self-fertile, or simply clone themselves without sex at all, and some species (of bacteria) just randomly share bits of their genomes with other species, and etc.
We're still in the primordial beginning of evolution of cryptocurrencies, and many of the features that will eventually prove out haven't yet demonstrated robust survival and domination in their niches that will someday be as obviously a good idea as teeth, or limbs. A whole lotta failure needs to happen before features are tested to destruction and the surviving mechanisms proved out.
Thanks!
We are certainly at an awkward transition phase where full/max distribution might be the ultimate goal but we haven't actually figured out how to get there or the tech simply does not exist yet.
One of the aspects of life that cryptos emulate is that each species seeks to maximally thrive*. There are population fluctuations that reveal natural limitations to total dominance of an ecosystem, population spikes in rabbits when spring rains create lush vegetation that population spikes in lynxes and coyotes immediately follow - but these are spikes because droughts follow good years, and predation, too, and then the predators' populations similarly plunge, creating a spike, not ubiquity of that species.
The mature crypto ecosystem may not produce one crypto that serves every social purpose, just as no species dominates every environment, for the same reasons. BTC dominance reflects the immaturity of crypto, IMHO. It is perhaps analogous to the dominance of blue-green algae that poisoned the anaerobic atmosphere of the early Earth with O2 by photosynthesis, and these billions of years and evolutionary experiments later, we still have blue-green algae, but life is far more productive, and O2 is fuel for an amazing diversity of animals.
What I expect of a mature crypto ecosystem - a mature economy, in fact - is similarly dizzying diversity of mechanisms that suit specific niches, and while this is hopefully not billions of years away, it's certainly beyond my feeble ability to predict how and when the requisite evolutionary events will make that happen. You're a lot smarter than me, and vastly better informed about crypto.
Maybe some of the great big balls of steel are in your court.
*Edit: the recent advent of Qubic, the predatory mining coin seeking to consume Monero, shows how early a stage in the evolution of crypt we are at.
It’s good to see the “Everything Goes Up” period finally over. And now instead seeing a tiny few winners touch 2021 All Time Highs while most the space rightfully doesn’t get close. This is a good sign that those days are over. I can’t believe anyone still thinks most crypto’s will still have a bull run just late. They are finally breaking apart action wise which is a sign the space is maturing finally.
!LADY !BBH !PIZZA !ALIVE
The security, or rather the lack of security, OPN (other peoples' network) imposes on crypto remains an unreckoned hurdle. The value of moneys is determined by the people using them. Despite Hive's present condition, it is almost uniquely able to translate community into economic power, because it is primarily a social media platform, and social media has become the largest financial sector in the global market in ~10 years, eclipsing every industry in the world, mining, agriculture, insurance, even government (maybe. I haven't enough fingers and toes to do that math). This reveals that it is people and civil society that is the fundamental basis for an economy. The bugs (features to scammers) that hold Hive back from dominating the global economy - I am not exaggerating at all - are ephemeral, specific, and few.
Hive may not be able to overcome these particular fragments of code and governance, but it may, and it's open source, which is why it exists at all, potentiating it spawning a platform that does overcome them. It's not in my wheelhouse, and my circumstances presently make that a good thing, because I could go dark at any moment, and therefore that evolution isn't dependent on me.
Evolution happens. Tech enables humanity to direct our evolution, and that is an incredible potential I hope to see fruit in the above mentioned way before I expire.
Hive has a tiny community, it’s probably overvalued if I was being totally honest. I love it here & invest time & effort to earn, but we are going much lower when the bear cycle is here for Bitcoin and such. Dime is coming!
!LADY !BBH !ALIVE !PIZZA