> This is all discussed in the original article

I read both posts, and I still have this question.

Is it possible to provide a clear and simple explanation? Is there any answer at all which is not the expected "you're right, centralized crypto is pointless at best and a scam at worse"?

Otherwise this sort of reply feels like a blatant attempt to dismiss a concern through hand-waving for which there is no good answer without addressing any of it's points.

Is a blockchain strictly necessary for decentralization at all? If the issue with decentralization is control and governance rather than technology, why not have a cooperative model that still functions on a centralized database?

I'm guessing your question is rhetorical, but in case it isn't:

Repeat after me: "blockchain is only required if you want to solve a problem that deals with permissionless, trustless and distributed consensus".

- permissionless: no previous vetting/authentication/authorization of any participant. If you can a priori authenticate users, you can have a decentralized system with Paxos, and you can run a "decentralized" governance system based on simple "web of trust".

- trustless: no participant is assumed to be reliable/honest

- distributed: the network can suffer disconnections and partitions, but the overall system can still work.

If you can choose who will be allowed to define "consensus", you can use other BFT consensus solutions, so no blockchain is needed.

If you have a "cooperative" model, this assumes that you can trust the participants, so no blockchain is needed.

If your system can withstand network disconnections/partitions, no blockchain is needed.

> - trustless: no participant is assumed to be reliable/honest

Shouldn't that be "at least one participant is assumed to be unreliable/dishonest"?

They're equivalent. If at least 1 participant is unreliable/dishonest and I don't know which one, the only logical reaction is to treat them all the same until I can determine the culpable one.

Perhaps, but it feels a bit like the Monty Hall paradox/game. If you know which ones are more truthful, then the odds aren't as bad as "everyone must be guilty until proven innocent."

"Innocent until proven guilty," the modus operandi of the US judicial system, at least in theory, is the design of a system that assumes trust and removes offenders.

It's not about "justice" or "fairness". It's about "correctness". An "honest" agent with stale data is as unreliable as the "dishonest" one.

When dealing with Byzantine-style problems, there is no such thing of "who is more truthful?", just "what is the consensus that should be agreed on?"

Participant needs a better definition. I'd think block chain requires trusting every participant.

The private key must always be trusted for what the person behind it intends for it to do

The cooperative model requires people to coordinate on choosing the same human authority figure.

Blockchain only requires people to coordinate on choosing the same programmatic criteria for block validity (and then choosing the longest valid chain).

Which practically ends up the same - see the Etherium fork/rollback.

One potential use maybe would be a blockchain that is openly run by a company (80+% of nodes or something) but if you also run a note it could continue after the company ceases to be.

There are other ways to do that but it might almost be a reasonable use case.

You can point to that event but it's actually not enough to establish that it "practically ends up the same."

You can ignore the event, but the trust we’re to put in the blockchain is based on a promise that such an event can’t happen, but it did.

Not really. The old chain even still exists.

Also, Ethereum is different from a real blockchain.

The original article by Moxie explains this.

My understanding is, some centralization doesn’t defeat the purpose of the blockchain. e.g. if a centralized server stores and modifies the blockchain but it’s public, then clients can verify the blockchain, and fork it if they don’t agree with the server.

But too much centralization, which seems to be the case now, basically does defeat the purpose. Because if everyone is using the same client and server or if people are interacting with these services insecurely exposing their wallets and data, then these companies could switch their backend to not use a blockchain or just steal coins. Most people probably wouldn’t even notice, and even if they did there’s nothing they could do.

No, Moxie correctly pointed out that the trust model and physical infrastructure are distinct architectural elements, and, it is good/ok to have decentralized for the former but centralized for the latter. The reason why was the long preamble about evolution of platforms vs protocols, and user preference for 3rd party managed convenience.

-- ps

So the question is whether it is possible to have effective solutions in that design space. Email in fact fits these design parameters: end users can use PGP and PKI to have private and authenticated communication, but as Moxie knows far better than me, it hasn't happened because now we have shifted the burden of running 'something' back to the end user again, who is now responsible for participating in a 'decentralized trust' system.

It appears the problem is reducible to (and thus is fundamentally about) identity and associated attributes of an identity.

So what we really need is a decentralized identity infrastructure with 'last mile' interfaces to your physical political jurisdiction for those who want "legal" attribution for fully decentralized interactions (possibly built on centralized infrastructure). All other "Web3" systems can be built on top of these.

I agree that we need decentralized identity infrastructure similar to sovrin.org, but what we’re going to get is “Login with Facebook” and “Login with Apple ID”.

Real-name system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-name_system

It's fascinating to learn that historically surnames were issued by governments.

If by "centralized crypto" we mean "everyone using OpenSea" (or similar custodian services) then the point is that OpenSea doesn't have full control over the data.

I can build a competitor to OpenSea that has access to everyone's NFT ownership data because it's in a public blockchain. If Twitter decides to shut down their service, it's gone.

Then how did OpenSea remove the NFT from Moxie's wallet?

His particular wallet pointed to OpenSea by default for his NFTs.

There are other wallets that do not, and the NFT never left Moxie's address.

They stopped hosting the URL that the blockchain pointed to

This isn’t correct. Moxie hosts the image, OpenSea hosts the endpoint the wallet queries for ownership listing. The whole system is glorified CRUD, OpenSea always has full control.