Three types of decentralisation#
Looks at de-centralisation largely from a technical perspective but has some interesting potential implications beyond.
When people talk about software decentralization, there are actually three separate axes of centralization/decentralization that they may be talking about. While in some cases it is difficult to see how you can have one without the other, in general they are quite independent of each other. The axes are as follows: - Architectural (de)centralization — how many physical computers is a system made up of? How many of those computers can it tolerate breaking down at any single time? - Political (de)centralization — how many individuals or organizations ultimately control the computers that the system is made up of? - Logical (de)centralization— does the interface and data structures that the system presents and maintains look more like a single monolithic object, or an amorphous swarm? One simple heuristic is: if you cut the system in half, including both providers and users, will both halves continue to fully operate as independent units? source