Technically 3Speak, Minds, LBRY and dTube are not decentralized. They are not censorship-resistant platforms, they are anti-censorship platforms. Their hearts are in the right place, but the tech is not where it needs to be to have earned the reputation for being decentralized.
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How do you define decentralized? People seem to have all sorts of different levels of decentralization that they use for the definition of that word.
Hi @jrcornel, you are right that decentralization is a spectrum. However, for us to ever turn the dream of decentralized, cenrsorship-resistant economics and liberty into a reality, we must not water down the definition.
If so called "decentralized" systems are not much more decentralized than traditional systems, why use them? All of the social platforms I mentioned are no more decentralized than your traditional corporation. They have a good attitude but not good enough tech.
How do you feel about Libra's plan? Would you call Libra's validator system decentralized? I wouldn't. Each validator is hand-picked. Still, the amount of consensus validators is 4.7X that of Steem/Hive. I had hoped that the witnesses were going to learn from the Steem event and adjust the new chain to be more decentralized, but they are not doing it.
It can be said that Libra would be more decentralized than the senate, because while it would have 100 validators or votes, each vote would be a representation of a corporation making up a collection of directors and shareholders. Still, its just 100 votes.
But if a blockchain is only as decentralized as the current traditional system, there is no point to do it. So we need something bigger than that.
Proof of Work with ASICs grows centralized over time, so sadly, that doesn't seem to work so well. Modern POS systems (not delegated POS) do seem to meet that standard. In Ethereum 2.0 every person with 32 ETH can become a validator, allowing for very many participants. Energi currrently has a POS system using master nodes and anyone with just 1000 NRG can run a master node, allowing for many participants.
Steem/Hive could do it too, but they would need to adjust their system. For example, currently the 21st witness is rotated, but a better system would be to have all 21 rotated constantly. This means profits is less predictable for individual witnesses, but getting rid of a "top witnesses" system and allowing for random rotation of the 21 witness selected out of hundreds or thousands of witness nodes can definitely improve decentralization and thus censorship resistance. At the present time, Steem/Hive is no more decentralized than your average university board, and in a few ways its quite a bit less decentralized.
I'm really not trying to be harsh, but it is important that we get decentralized systems right. If we allow "decentralization" to become nothing more than a buzz word so that we pump our bags to make money, the original purpose will be lost and no real innovation will be made.