Information is not a Time Machine

The fundamental conflict of openness and security in blockchain mechanism design[25] baffled blockchain developers greatly and sometimes caused schizophrenic misunderstanding of this technology among people. One such misunderstanding, held by many in the blockchain community, is that the advent of Bitcoin broke the impasse with economic incentives (the crypto-token mining mechanism) that magically negotiated a truce between security and openness. It has been pointed out that that is not the case[25], which is agreeable with empirical observation – the concentration of computing power (called hash power) and locked value toward several large cryptocurrencies, especially Bitcoin, looked very similar to the kind of centralization of power in the traditional economy and society.

That’s kind of shocking – could Bitcoin also be centralized? Heretical as it sounds, it is not without merit – what do you expect off the consequence that Byzantine behavior could ruin the party when you left the centralized land? That openness shall reduce the kind of security no matter what economic incentive you throw in for the world to care. It is called Byzantine (i.e., random) behavior for a good reason – that the world we are in today being centralized is the greatest hack in human history, that a Faustian deal was inadvertently struck to duct-tape the illusion of civilization?