Author: Eric Lombrozo 2015-09-20 22:21:55
Published on: 2015-09-20T22:21:55+00:00
In a discussion on the bitcoin-dev mailing list, concerns were raised about Bitcoin's vulnerability to government crackdowns given its chokepoints. Hackers have already targeted the routers to divert mining traffic and Bitcoin traffic is easily seen and blocked by ISPs. While increasing the number of users may protect against governments, this alone will not decentralize exchanges which are serious chokepoints. Decentralizing exchanges would require building consensus in Bitcoin development, which is currently a pressing issue. There was also discussion about the lack of focus on developer decentralization despite the endless discussion over miners centralization. To increase basic infrastructure nodes, a factor much larger than 2 or 3 is required, more like 100 or 1000, but it is doable with properly aligned incentives.
Updated on: 2023-06-10T22:35:32.162192+00:00