Is decentralization winning?

For a brief moment Binance Smart Chain eclipsed Ethereum in the overall number of transactions, leading crypto-twitter to ask if decentralization is actually meaningful? Or if, rather, people are happy to live a casino run and curated by CZ if it allows them better returns.

This leads us to the broader concept of swarms, which in many respects are thriving, albeit far from the world of popular influencers. First, eth swarm, a previously internal project at Ethereum has launched its own BZZ testnet. Second, the Swarm Network, a project that I am some degree responsible for, has effectively finished its core self-service tokenization platform and is putting it through an audit. This has been managed by community members and the approximately 400 masternode holders, independent from the previous management team which goes on privately through an independent entity known as Swarm Capital.

If one is speculating on the markets, does it make sense to bet on the more “pure” decentralized systems? In part, Ethereum has only been partially decentralized, it has its own centralized figurehead and Foundation with sometimes opaque management structures (including seeming backdoor dealings). Yet it has been more successful than many of its peers. Currently Cardano, Polkadot and BSC challenge it for preeminence, each with its own set of benefits.

Personally, I have been tending towards the academic research topics, both at MIT, where I am now a connection science fellow (https://connection.mit.edu/joel-dietz) and Notre Dame University, where I now advise on various aspects of blockchain related IP.

I do not have a strong thesis on the future. I hope, for the sake of humanity, that all political and central banking systems do not become secondary features of casino games. The tides of corporatism do not leave me with the most sanguine of outlooks.

Many years in some writings on a private Bitcoin mailing list I noted the staying power of meme-chains. I never thought that we might need to ask a meme god to save us. But perhaps, much like democracy, decentralization is more of an ideology that must be fought for if it is to be triumphant.