Gonna argue that Hive has a low decentralization rating, not a medium rating. 20 plus 1 block producing witnesses is not exactly decentralized, in fact, that's pretty centralized I would say, especially the group that runs this chain. It's one problem I have had with the chain since I started back in the STEEM days and we saw how that went and one of the big reasons I am powering down and leaving the chain. Because that centralization is why many people have left over time as well. It's not just staking concentration, but the fact that stake can downvote you into oblivion if they don't like what you say. Seems pretty centralized to me.
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It's 20+1 per round. There's a lot more than that in block producing witnesses overall.
It's still centralized...
Because?
It's the same 20 validators at the top with one in rotation. How is that not centralized? That's the problem with DPoS as a whole. A bunch of concentrated power at the top. Sorry, but there isn't an argument that you can bring that will connivence me otherwise.
Because top 20 witness on DPoS does not mean the same decentralization context as other chains... and if one does not know how to compare... mistakes happen.
Decentralization is not "single sentence" even with bitcoin....
One can give me ANY coin, and I can dispute ANY exploit against other coins exploitation... it ALL depends! I can hack stuff if I would have the time... or I can teach... same.
Arguing depends... that's why I love curations, otherwise I would be fighting idiots on X social idiocrasy
Not to my understanding... of governance and chain code contribution. Which almost 99% of chains are centralized.
Well, if you want to add in code contribution to the mix aside from just full nodes and block producers, then yeah, every chain has a layer of centralization, but the thing is, the nodes and block producers have to accept those changes. With something like Hive, you are only having to campaign 20 people for major changes, because the one vote that rotates around doesn't matter. The only ones that matter are those top 20 whales that have ran the chain since the STEEM days. Most average users don't understand nor care, they just want to blog and earn their tokens. Most don't care about governance. On most other chains, when you have more nodes and miners in the mix, who is in charge of development doesn't matter as much because those changes have to be agreed on by the majority of nodes and miners before it can be accepted as the correct chain. That's how decentralization should work.
I rest my case then. Hive is decentralized then.
👍 I'll leave you with that belief then.
I understand what you said... and I agree to some extent even with you. But I don't agree on the low part, because of "there are more into play then just witnesses", and also on top of that I know even lesser decentralized things... and if you consider a scale of 0-10 and if high is above 8 and medium is 4 to 8... then in my view Hive is clearly a Medium.
My point is, it all relative. But thanks for the coming up for a discussion. Always good to constructively add value.
Maybe 90 to 99 to be more exact...
Yes. Hive is 100% Centralized. The downvote abuse destroyed Hive 5 years ago
After the STEEM takeover, real consensus came back after a few hours due to dormant non-voting accounts voting back. Attacking stake was removed from the Hive airdrop. If a block producer becomes malicious it’s voted out in no time.
Monero got reorged several times already, as much as I have been supporting, spending and holding XMR for years now, it has its problems too if a little selfish mining chain could create all of those problems, imagine a state actor with unlimited resources.
The other chains listed in the post: one runs basically on a private chat, one has a 40% premine, one has been hijacked by corporations to never compete with fiat. So again, every chain has its problems.
Yeah I get what you’re saying, every chain has its own issues. Monero isn’t perfect, as a miner since 2018, believe me, I get it. The difference is consensus comes from work, not stake weight or a handful of whales that basically run the chain. Yes, 51% of the hashrate was hit and an 18 block reorg took place, but miners stepped up pretty quick to stop it. At least with PoW you can see the attack coming, and it’s not just a matter of a few big wallets deciding how things go.
Hive showed with the Steem takeover that stake based governance is extremely fragile. That fight only worked because a bunch of dormant accounts woke up and voted. That’s not something you can count on happening every time. The top witnesses and a few whales basically run the show and can shut people down with downvotes or push things through if they want. Not to mention, they are really the only ones that run RPC nodes that allow access to the blockchain. There are only a small handful of full nodes out there, and most of them run on the same infrastructure, so if Privex ever goes down (major central point of failure for Hive), the chain is FUBAR.
With Monero, if someone wants to attack, they have to bring the hashpower. It’s open and anyone with a CPU can contribute, not just the people holding the most tokens which is basically what Hive is as far as consensus is concerned. PoW is not a popularity contest like DPoS is. That’s why I don’t rate Hive as highly decentralized. I like Hive for the social aspect and the decentralized database, but it’s not the same level of security and openness as a PoW chain.
To mitigate that you either implement more lanes for specific hardware (not relying only on randomx) or you put a “checkpoint” mechanism like Delayed Proof of Work.
The Steem takeover took place due to the ninjamined stake, so it was not a random whale with a huge stake that took control, in a fair DPoS scenario (no initial premine/ninjamine stake) it would have probably never happened.
I was around for all of that, I remember, and no, it wouldn't have happened without the pre-mine. But the issue is still that there is too much concentration with the top whales, and in a proof of stake ecosystem, that is nothing but centralization and creating a bottle neck for things to happen. To few people having too much power.
And yes, as much as I love the idea of the decentralization that CPU mining brings, there are reasons why most other chains have gone to ASICs. The latest BS with Qubic and the selfish mining does absolutely show the need for something to happen. It's why I have shifted from building a new Ryzen machine for XMR to getting another DOGE/LTC miner.
Something we could say though is that the STEEM initial distribution came from proof of work (we could argue fishy mining bug and the few participants but anyway). The ninjamine was something around 80% at the beginning while at the time of the attack way down to 30%, the nature of this system is that with time more and more stake goes in the hands of new accounts.
Of course then you have people just selling right away all the rewards etc but we can’t really force users to stay vested just to have a perfect DPoS system to show off.
Other DPoS and PoS systems have way bigger problems than Hive as there’s no way to redirect inflation to new users joining like we have here and I admit I would not put a dime in them.
As for Monero, it had a mining bug too coming from Bytecoin that lasted I believe 2/3 weeks before they fixed it and we don’t really know due to its privacy how many coins people who exploited the bug could get.
So yeah in conclusion, nothing is perfect, but Hive works pretty well compared to other DPoS systems where I totally agree with your arguments.