Quote from: TransaDox on September 15, 2015, 04:47:13 PM

Quote from: adamstgBit on September 15, 2015, 03:34:24 PM

there's a difference between decentralized and distributed...

regular joe, doesn't necessarily have to run a node to keep bitcoin decentralized.

does that necessarily mean the bitcoin network is not Decentralized?

NO.

if you think joe is interested in running a full node because he fears counterparty risk you don't know joe.

Except there is a conflation with those definitions that I think was intentional so as to simplify.
A) is certainly centralised.
B) is certainly decentralised.
C) is also decentralised but just a different organisation.

B) is a Hierarchical decentralisation - commonly used in military communications and c) is a Mesh decentralisation commonly used in ad-hoc wireless.

So where does distributed come in to it?
Distributed is used to describe how work or computation is partitioned within a network. Things like BOINC are distributed and it is quite possible to have decentralised and distributed as well as centralised and distributed (where BOINC is the latter).

In a nutshell. Decentralised != Distributed in the same way a Road != a Car

As an example, lets take a mining pool. So in a mining pool, the mining *work* is distributed to the participants but the network architecture is B) hierarchical decentralisation (around the work coordinator/ provider). All communications within the pool are worker to and from the admin and the admin communicates the results to the wider network and relays any benefits back to the workers.

The issue we have at present is there is that full node clients are mesh networked to create their view of the block chain but all mining is Hierarchically decentralised and as the number of full nodes (required for acceptance of the miners' blocks) decreases, miners will start up their own botnets to propagate their blocks faster. Therefore they will own the means of production and the means of distribution and centralisation will be complete and you will have large mining corporations sitting in Google Datacenters with everyone using webs wallets.

Because mining is no longer "distributed" as originally envisioned, a decentralised network is counter-productive to mining efficiency. In the old days, a client was a miner and thus all mining was distributed and decentralised and until that is the case again, we will see more and more centralisation unless its already too late.

if there is more than one node keeping track of the blockchain then we are still decentralized. period the end.
of course you want the system to be as decentralized as possible, but limiting functionally in order to get a little more decentralization???
i mean where do you draw the line
is 1MB the line why not 1.1 or 1.5MB
you going to argue 1.1MB would make a difference for decentralization?
where do you draw the line? that is the question, once that's defined everything falls into place