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Re:Solana Labs completes a $314M private token sale led by A... by rel2thr on Sunday June 13, 2021 @07:58PM (#27497805)
I think people care about decentralization only to an extent. They really just want to it to be decentralized enough that the SEC or CFPB won't shut it down. I call this 'plausible decentralization'.

If you try to run an unlicensed exchange without KYC on AWS, you will get shut down pretty quick.

I think the government will look at Solana and say its too complicated to shut down.

Re:Solana Labs completes a $314M private token sale led by A... by api on Sunday June 13, 2021 @08:00PM (#27497819)
That only works as long as the government stays clueless. If Solana or Angorand or whatever gets big enough and the government employs some tech-savvy people to examine it, they'll figure out that there is a subset of blessed validators out there that could be legally compelled to cease and desist and that this would cripple the network.

That wouldn't really work for Bitcoin or other PoW coins. They could shut down big mines and new ones would pop up. Of course they could instead invest a lot in both seizing mines and building their own and 51% the network... that's always a risk and any large enough nation state could do it.

Re:Solana Labs completes a $314M private token sale led by A... by baby on Sunday June 13, 2021 @08:45PM (#27498089)
It’s the same for Bitcoin btw. The government can just forbid any VASP to accept bitcoin and to authorize on/off ramp and trades involving bitcoin. ISPs could also block miners and bitcoin websites. The coin is censorship resistant… to a certain extent. Maybe there’ll always be someone running it, and there’ll be a black market for on/off ramp, but it will severely cripple the adoption.
Re:Solana Labs completes a $314M private token sale led by A... by tudorw on Monday June 14, 2021 @04:32AM (#27500513)
'it will severely cripple the adoption', I'm not sure it's so straightforward as that, if large numbers of governments take an authoritarian stance on independent global currencies is there not a possibility that, while impacting network efficiency, it might underpin a new found desire and need for said independent global currency and instead drive adoption of currencies that have this resilience?
Re:Solana Labs completes a $314M private token sale led by A... by baby on Monday June 14, 2021 @05:15PM (#27508396)
I think it’s worth than that for bitcoin as bitcoin relies on a connected network for security. The risk of forks is too high without that. For other cryptocurrencies based on BFT at least the network would come to a stop and safety wouldn’t be violated (no double spending).
Re:Solana Labs completes a $314M private token sale led by A... by SilasX on Sunday June 13, 2021 @09:11PM (#27498245)
True, but that failure mode doesn't exploit the network's centralization and is unrelated to how centralized it is.
Re:Solana Labs completes a $314M private token sale led by A... by ivalm on Monday June 14, 2021 @03:00AM (#27500051)
So it means centralization might not be too relevant to the government a ability to ban.
Re:Solana Labs completes a $314M private token sale led by A... by SilasX on Sunday June 13, 2021 @09:09PM (#27498239)
Plus, the miners are in different countries that don't obey each other's court orders.
Re:Solana Labs completes a $314M private token sale led by A... by siwatanejo on Thursday June 17, 2021 @11:07PM (#27546975)
> ... any large enough nation state could do it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncPyMUfNyVM

Re:Solana Labs completes a $314M private token sale led by A... by encryptluks2 on Monday June 14, 2021 @01:01AM (#27499451)
I don't think they really care, especially once they are invested. They may care enough to do minimum research before investing in a token, but once they are invested it is like watching football. Algorand claims to be decentralized, but relies on gatekept relays and a centralized domain. If you bring this up, it is like a cult where how dare you question anything about the coin we've invested in.
Re:Solana Labs completes a $314M private token sale led by A... by NicoJuicy on Monday June 14, 2021 @02:25AM (#27499840)
The government has been warning about investing in crypto for a while now.
Re:Solana Labs completes a $314M private token sale led by A... by TimJRobinson on Monday June 14, 2021 @02:36AM (#27499890)
A big risk I'm concerned about is say some whistleblower posts some classified material to the Solana Blockchain, that the US government wants removed. Does Solana have the ability to roll back the chain or remove specific pieces of information from it?

If so, where is the line of what they will / won't remove? I fear we get into a Facebook like situation where nobody is happy where that line is drawn. Could legitimate projects be shut down because a government has deemed them illegal because they aren't complying with regulations?

Re:Solana Labs completes a $314M private token sale led by A... by x4e on Monday June 14, 2021 @06:44AM (#27501122)
> Does Solana have the ability to roll back the chain or remove specific pieces of information from it?

Well potentially if enough validators forked the chain before the material was added and were able to build a longer chain than the one with the classified material, but even then it would be pointless as the previous chain still exists and will have been distributed to every node.

The question is, why would they want to remove it? Solana is a global blockchain, not a US government entity. If they were to abide by US government requests, it would be only fair to also abide by the requests of other governments - but what if North Korea wanted information removed? As you said, where do we draw the line over what is a "valid" request?

And more importantly, who draws the line? There is no single Solana entity, it is a group of validators who would decide this. Achieving consensus on something like this would never happen, especially among a group of people who are trying to be resistant to government censorship.

Re:Solana Labs completes a $314M private token sale led by A... by matheusmoreira on Monday June 14, 2021 @09:03AM (#27502026)
> If you try to run an unlicensed exchange without KYC on AWS, you will get shut down pretty quick.

The next step in cryptocurrency technology is to decentralize the exchanges themselves. Ideally it should be impossible to shut them down, regulate them or even understand what's going on. Governments will either give up or become tyrants in the process of fighting increasingly subversive technology. We'll find their limits.

Re:Solana Labs completes a $314M private token sale led by A... by nvdr on Tuesday June 15, 2021 @08:06AM (#27514072)
Almost there.. each network has its own decentralized exchange where you can swap and buy tokens. We are just missing contracts for derivatives such as futures and leverage trading.
Re:Solana Labs completes a $314M private token sale led by A... by skinnymuch on Monday June 14, 2021 @07:13AM (#27501287)
I love your “plausible decentralization” term. I tag and organize content, arguments, trends. “Plausible X” is a great categorization.