A while ago (around October 20th, Eastern Time), Amazon's cloud services experienced a massive outage, which severely affected many blockchain systems in the encryption ecosystem, including Ethereum.
Relevant data shows that approximately 37% of the nodes on the Ethereum mainnet are hosted on Amazon Cloud, making this portion of nodes victims of the recent outage event. The offline status of these nodes has also impacted the performance of the Ethereum mainnet.
So many people online began to echo: “The decentralization of Ethereum is false.”
Such events and their potential consequences were often discussed topics in the early encryption ecosystem. I remember reading quite a few articles on this subject when I first entered the encryption ecosystem. The predecessors at that time had already provided clear explanations for such issues, so during that era, such questions did not provoke much resonance.
As time goes by, perhaps the predecessors of that year have left this ecosystem, or maybe they are no longer willing to waste their breath on such topics (just like Satoshi Nakamoto said, those who understand, understand, and he has no time to persuade others to understand). Now, when such a situation arises, I basically do not see any detailed feedback and responses online regarding such echoes.
So many years have passed, and many new forces have entered this ecosystem. They do not have the luck I had back then, nor can they understand the explanations of those pioneers regarding this issue. I do not want these new forces to be misled by such flattery, so in this article, I will do my best to share my understanding and views on this issue.
First, let's talk about the overall viewpoint:
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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 in traditional centralized systems, while also ensuring that even if the nodes in the system are subjected to a large-scale attack, the system will only experience a decrease in performance, rather than a complete outage.
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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 the control of centralization, being able to achieve technological neutrality and trustworthy neutrality.
- To achieve an ideally decentralized system, nodes need to avoid being centrally controlled or interfered with 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 has to take this path, and Ethereum also has to take this path.
To some extent, Ethereum needs to work harder and improve in this area, as Bitcoin has already found it difficult to make further improvements. In a sense, the entire decentralization responsibility of the encryption ecosystem largely relies on Ethereum to maintain and promote.
To understand this issue, we should start with the history of Bitcoin.
In 2009, shortly after Bitcoin went live, a Finnish university student named Martti, who would later be regarded as one of the pioneers of Bitcoin, eagerly asked Satoshi Nakamoto: What could he do for Bitcoin?
Satoshi Nakamoto's reply was straightforward (the gist is): Run Bitcoin.
What does Satoshi Nakamoto mean?
What he means is: as a newborn Bitcoin, the most important thing is to survive, and to survive, as many people as possible need to run the Bitcoin client. The more people running the Bitcoin client, the more decentralized Bitcoin becomes. The more decentralized Bitcoin is, the stronger it is.
At that time, there were too few Bitcoin nodes and they were too easily hijacked. If some force suddenly blacked out the few Bitcoin clients that existed at that time and deleted the Bitcoin source code, Bitcoin would be immediately strangled. Those who laugh at this have every reason to say “Bitcoin's decentralization is a lie.”
However, the birth of Bitcoin has created a mechanism in this world that makes decentralization possible, which is a disruptive change from 0 to 1.
However, this “possibility of decentralization” is still precarious. Therefore, Satoshi Nakamoto is eager for more people to run Bitcoin so that it can 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, which Satoshi Nakamoto strongly opposed.
His reasoning is simple: there are still very few Bitcoin nodes in their infancy, and the entire system could still be completely hijacked. In this case, if Bitcoin gets caught up in political conflicts, it could very likely face a tumultuous fate.
If at this moment the US government uses national power to attack Bitcoin, Bitcoin could completely perish. Those who laugh can also say, “The decentralization of Bitcoin is a lie.”
However, by this time, Bitcoin has become much stronger than it was in 2009. Even if the US government uses national power to attack it, it would become relatively difficult. Bitcoin has gradually developed from 1 to 10, and decentralization has begun to gain strength.
But this “becoming powerful” did not fall from the sky; it was built by the participants in the communities under the incentive of the genius mechanism of Bitcoin, and it is also the result of the selfless dedication and hard work of a large number of 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 to be destroyed, Bitcoin could still operate on satellites in space.
At this point, it has become quite difficult for any power in the world to completely destroy Bitcoin in practice.
And today, the robustness of Bitcoin goes without saying.
All of this is the achievement of generations of community members who have continuously worked hard and innovated. Without the relentless efforts of these individuals, at any previous point, Bitcoin could have been easily destroyed, and those who laughed could have said, “The decentralization of Bitcoin is a lie.”
Bitcoin is like this, Ethereum is the same.
Ethereum is striving to continuously improve and perfect its mechanisms, so that it can operate normally even when some nodes are controlled by centralized institutions (this is itself part of the definition of the consensus mechanism), but it cannot guarantee that the nodes themselves will not be controlled by centralization.
Returning to the issues faced by Ethereum this time.
I will look at this issue like this:
Amazon controls 37% of the Ethereum nodes and has launched an attack on Ethereum (paralyzing these nodes). Did Ethereum experience downtime during this attack?
If Ethereum goes down, then there really is a problem, and the decentralization would be fake. If it doesn't, then it proves that Ethereum's decentralization is effective, although this effect is still not ideal and there is still a lot of room for improvement.
On the contrary, the other systems that went down during this attack fully exposed their own “centralization” issues--------- they were centrally controlled, and once problems occurred, the consequences were what we observed.
From another perspective, this also further proves the importance of decentralization.
In this event, 37% of Ethereum nodes were controlled by “centralized institutions”, which indicates 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: Maddy contributes an additional node for Bitcoin, and Blockstream operates nodes for Bitcoin in space. They are all doing their utmost to contribute to the decentralization of Bitcoin. Without them, Bitcoin would not have the brilliance and achievements it has today.
Similarly, the decentralization of Ethereum nodes requires effort from the community. For example: do not rely solely on a particular cloud service, and it is even advisable to try to run nodes using private server systems as much as possible. Although under the current conditions, many node operators are still reluctant to leave Amazon for commercial interests, because the services and experiences provided by Amazon are definitely the best in terms of cost-effectiveness. 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 encryption ecosystem will have a decentralized cloud that surpasses Amazon. In fact, this is also the direction that the encryption ecosystem has been striving for.
The decentralization of Ethereum is definitely not a lie.
It effectively withstood Amazon's “attack,” but it is not yet perfect and still needs improvement. This requires the efforts of the entire community and a genuine belief in the foundational value of “decentralization.”
