Recently (around October 20, Eastern Time), Amazon's cloud services experienced a massive outage, which severely impacted many blockchain systems in the crypto ecosystem, including Ethereum.
Relevant data shows that approximately 37% of Ethereum's mainnet nodes are hosted on Amazon's cloud, making these nodes victims of the outage. The downtime of these nodes also affected the performance of the Ethereum mainnet.
As a result, many people online began to echo: "Ethereum's decentralization is a lie."
Such events and their potential consequences were frequently discussed topics in the early crypto ecosystem. I remember reading many articles on this topic when I first entered the crypto space. The predecessors at that time had already provided clear explanations regarding these issues, so such questions did not provoke the same kind of echoing back then.
Time has passed, and perhaps those predecessors have left the ecosystem, or they may no longer wish to engage in discussions on such topics (as Satoshi Nakamoto said, those who understand, understand; those who don't, he has no time to persuade). Now, when such situations arise, I have not seen detailed feedback and responses to this kind of echoing online.
Over the years, many new forces have entered this ecosystem. They do not have the luck I had back then to understand the explanations of those pioneers regarding this issue. I do not want these new forces to be misled by such echoing, so in this article, I will share my understanding and views on this issue to the best of my ability.
First, let me state my overall viewpoint:
Whether it is Bitcoin or Ethereum, their greatness lies in the design of a disruptive mechanism. This mechanism can avoid the fatal single point of failure found in traditional centralized systems, and it also ensures that even if a large number of nodes in the system are attacked, the system will only experience a decline in performance and will not go down.
The "decentralization" we discuss does not guarantee that the nodes themselves will not be hijacked or controlled by centralization, but rather focuses on the fact that even if the nodes are hijacked and controlled by centralization, or used to attack the system, the system will not go down. Such a system can be said to have escaped centralized control and can achieve technical neutrality and trust neutrality.
- To achieve an ideally decentralized state, nodes need to avoid being controlled or interfered with by centralization as much as possible. However, such decentralization does not come automatically; it is never perfect and always requires generations of participants to continuously improve and strive.
Bitcoin must follow this path, and Ethereum must do the same.
To some extent, Ethereum needs to work harder and improve in this area because Bitcoin has already reached a point where further improvement is difficult. In fact, in a certain sense, the responsibility for maintaining and advancing the decentralization of the entire crypto ecosystem largely falls on Ethereum.
To understand this issue, we should start with the history of Bitcoin.
In 2009, shortly after Bitcoin was launched, a Finnish student named Martti, who would later be regarded as one of Bitcoin's pioneers, eagerly asked Satoshi Nakamoto what he could do for Bitcoin.
Satoshi's response was straightforward (in essence): run Bitcoin.
What did Satoshi mean?
He meant that as a nascent Bitcoin, the most important thing was to survive, and to survive, as many people as possible needed to run Bitcoin's client. The more people running Bitcoin's client, the more decentralized Bitcoin would be. The more decentralized Bitcoin is, the stronger it becomes.
At that time, there were too few Bitcoin nodes, making them easy to hijack. If some force suddenly blacked out the few Bitcoin clients available at that time and deleted Bitcoin's source code, Bitcoin would be immediately strangled. Those laughing at it would have every reason to say, "Bitcoin's decentralization is a lie."
However, the birth of Bitcoin introduced a mechanism that made decentralization possible, marking a disruptive change from 0 to 1.
Yet, this "possibility of decentralization" was still precarious. Therefore, Satoshi urgently hoped that more people would run Bitcoin to help it flourish and bear fruit as soon as possible.
In 2010, after WikiLeaks exposed U.S. diplomatic incidents, the Bitcoin community called for donations in Bitcoin to break the financial blockade, to which Satoshi firmly opposed.
His reasoning was simple: the number of Bitcoin nodes was still very few, and the entire system could still be completely hijacked. In such a situation, if Bitcoin were to get involved in political conflicts, it could face dire consequences.
If the U.S. government were to use state power to attack Bitcoin, it could potentially lead to Bitcoin's demise. Those laughing at it could also say, "Bitcoin's decentralization is a lie."
However, by this time, Bitcoin was much stronger than it was in 2009. Even if the U.S. government were to use state power, attacking it would become more challenging. Bitcoin had gradually developed from 1 to 10, and decentralization was beginning to strengthen.
But this "strengthening" did not come from nowhere; it was built by the efforts of participants in the community under the incentive of Bitcoin's ingenious mechanism, and it was also the result of the selfless dedication and hard work of many Bitcoin pioneers.
In 2017, Blockstream ran Bitcoin in space, on a satellite. Bitcoin moved from Earth to space. It is not an exaggeration to say that even if the internet on Earth were destroyed, Bitcoin could still operate on satellites in space.
At this point, any force in the world wanting to completely destroy Bitcoin would face significant practical difficulties.
And today, Bitcoin's robustness goes without saying.
All of this is the result of generations of community members' continuous efforts and innovations. Without these people's relentless efforts, at any previous node, Bitcoin could have been easily destroyed, and those laughing at it could have said, "Bitcoin's decentralization is a lie."
Bitcoin is like this, and Ethereum is the same.
Ethereum's direction of effort is to continuously improve and refine its mechanism, so that it can operate normally even when some nodes are controlled by centralized institutions (this is part of what the consensus mechanism defines), rather than guaranteeing that the nodes themselves will not be controlled by centralization.
Returning to the issue Ethereum faced this time.
I view this issue as follows:
Amazon controlled 37% of Ethereum's nodes and launched an attack on Ethereum (paralyzing these nodes). Did Ethereum go down under this attack?
If Ethereum went down, then there would indeed be a problem, and decentralization would be a lie. If it did not go down, then it proves that Ethereum's decentralization is effective, although this effect is still not ideal and has significant room for improvement.
On the contrary, the other systems that went down during this attack fully exposed their own "centralization" issues— they were controlled by centralization, and once problems arose, the consequences were as we have seen.
From another perspective, this further proves the importance of decentralization.
In this event, 37% of Ethereum nodes were controlled by "centralized institutions," indicating that the operation and maintenance of Ethereum nodes are still not decentralized enough. How can this problem be solved?
The Bitcoin community already has classic examples: Martti contributed a node to Bitcoin, and Blockstream ran nodes for Bitcoin in space. They all did their utmost to contribute to Bitcoin's decentralization. Without them, Bitcoin would not have the brilliance and achievements it has today.
Similarly, the decentralization of Ethereum nodes also requires community effort. For example: do not rely solely on a single cloud service, and even try to use private server systems to run nodes. Although under current conditions, many node operators may not want to leave Amazon for commercial interests, as Amazon certainly provides the best cost-performance ratio in terms of services and experience. But I believe that after this incident, there will definitely be node operators who will become more vigilant and make significant improvements.
Of course, the best solution is to hope that one day, the crypto ecosystem will have a decentralized cloud that surpasses Amazon. In fact, this is also the direction the crypto ecosystem has been striving for.
Ethereum's decentralization is definitely not a lie.
It effectively withstood Amazon's "attack," but it is still not perfect and needs further improvement. This requires the efforts of the entire community and a genuine belief in the foundational value of "decentralization."
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