He stressed that a decentralized network is free from government censorship. Blockchains are based on confidence as opposed to websites.
Bitcoin influencer and independent developer Udi Wertheimer recently presented on Twitter his new show The Uncontrollable. In its first edition, he had Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin as a host. They both debated the concern of whether blockchains are better than web databases.
During the meeting, which consisted of discussing a particular topic tweeting their views, Buterin answered questions. One of them was about the reason why Ethereum is better than a single-node private chain that would run as a new hypothetical Google service.
Before delving further into his explanation, Buterin clarified that he would call “GoogThereum” the merger of a blockchain like Ethereum, with a database like Google. In this regard, he added three risks that such a platform would face.
Centralized vs. Decentralized
Detailing the risks, the Ethereum co-founder said that GoogThereum could censor its users or interfere with an application, due to possible pressure from the US government. Second, GoogThereum could censor defending Google’s strategic interests, and third, GoogThereum could be hacked or unintentionally broken. He clarified that the Ethereum blockchain is free from all these dangers as it is decentralized.
Buterin noted that concern about power abuse by centralized applications, in general, is a common concern of foreign governments. He added an article that reads that the head of data privacy in Germany has told federal agencies not to use WhatsApp, amid concerns that it feeds Facebook with private data.
After Buterin’s reply, the host of the program raised his point of view, noting that the web allows eradicating censorship to a certain extent as unhappy users could theoretically move to other servers. In other words, a citizen who feels at risk in Google could change to Amazon.
In this regard, Buterin expressed his opinion on the construction of a consortium blockchain with nodes managed by Google, Huawei, and The Pirate Bay, for example. Even though this approach would be a move to address various concerns, he believes that such a solution would not be so easy to build, the reason why it has never existed.
Wertheimer said that he found it curious that he had mentioned The Pirate Bay, which is a good example of how websites can survive censorship attempts. He also asked what could go wrong with the current fairly distributed web model.
The Pirate Bay is a search engine for BitTorrent files, through which it is possible to download all kinds of multimedia material. Since 2005, it has managed to survive persecutions, regulations, and closings amid multiple controversies.
Buterin added that cryptocurrency projects cannot experience a fate similar to that of The Pirate Bay, in which there are domain omission, illegal work, and everything that ensures that the site is active. This could work for torrent operators, but not for the founders of cryptocurrency projects. Such tactics cannot be used for the long-term maintenance of a decentralized network, which is much more complex than a website.
By Alexander Salazar
