Humans cannot leave the Internet. If the Internet is really reconstructed, it is the reconstruction of human society
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NNS should take this into account at the beginning of its design. If NNS really has the right to manage the network, it should also have a good gov system
I don’t know if the foundation intends to design the network to be managed by national governments or directly by NNS
If the NNS directly manages the network, the current governance mechanism is really bad. It can be said that a blank test paper was handed in.
If it is to be governed by governments of various countries, then NNS and icp tokens are no longer needed. They will deprive governments of their jurisdiction and coinage rights. I believe that no government will allow ic to do so.
There are actually two meanings of decentralization of ICP: Internal decentralization and External decentralization.
Internal decentralization means decentralizing the voting power of the NNS.
External decentralization means decentralizing the powers of the governments around the world.
As for now, it seems that the IC community mainly focus on the internal decentralization of ICP, but in my opinion, what is more important in the long run is the external decentralization of ICP. On the other hand, the Bitcoin community mainly focus on the external decentralization, which, I think, may be called a Nakamoto Paradise.
So, the real question of (external) decentralization for ICP is:
Will the Internet Computer still be fine even when all the governments around the world have united in banning it?
If the answer is no, then the NNS cannot be a real DAO and is just another accessory organization of the governments of some countries.
If someday a proposal is adopted by the NNS but all the governments around the world consider it to be illegal, then what will happen?
I understand that for now the Internet Computer may not have the ability to rebel against some powerful governments, but I hope that it will have the ability in the future. That is, I have a dream that one day the NNS will make us all live in a real “global village”, and then what is legal or illegal can be totally determined by the voting system of the NNS.
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How is that different than any other blockchain?
If you take Moore’s law to heart then we’re probably 4-6years from current IC datacenter based hardware running on a raspberry pi like device. When we have that a performant badlands is viable and the ability for a government to shut it down without turning off the internet would be difficult.
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The Internet Computer is supposed to the blockchain of all blockchains. So there should be a difference.
That is really great. But I am afraid that many members of the IC community cannot fully recognize the importance of external decentralization of ICP. Some community leaders even want the Internet Computer to be in full compliance with the law of different countries, and I think they are going in a wrong direction. I hope that the Internet Computer will become the Metaverse and the NNS will be the supergovernment of the Metaverse.
The NNS is tuned to incentivize the best decisions possible for the health of a decentralized computer network. There is nothing it tuned to ensure human rights, provide for the common defense, ensure tranquility, etc, etc. That computer network can host any number of other right-sized and specialized networks that could be tuned to do those things. Human society thrives through the specialization of labor and governance will thrive when we have specialization of governance. I’d be wary of putting too many eggs in the NNS basket.
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There’s no blockchain or any other platform that will ever survive “every government in the world uniting to ban it”.
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I can see partly what concerns you. Maybe you just want the Internet Computer to become an advanced version of the Internet. But if so, the Internet Computer might fail in the same way as the Internet: today, a totalitarian government can easily build a “Wall” to restrict the freedom of internet users, and some governments even want to shut the Internet down. The NNS version of supergovenment can be essentially different from all the governments that have ever practiced throughout human history: it is a government of everyone (whoever you are and wherever you come from) all over the world, and it is realized through advanced blockchain technology, not through physical violence.
I don’t think you can be sure of that. In fact, if everyone wants it, then the governments cannot stop anything. So, the real question is how many and how much people want it.
Seems you have forgotten history.
Thinking that you are going to take over the world is the start of the Dot-com Bubble.
We are seeing the same repeating history of excessive speculation of Crypto with massive growth and adoption that will bring many to ruin.
Most of the coins out there, in my opinion, have little in the way of an idea other than they can.
Many just want to pump and dump for massive gains.
This history has repeated itself in the past with transport, electronics and many other major changes in history.
If history does repeat then investors will get tired of the BS and lies and pull out and then from the ashes will raise the real coins that will survive.
ICP or NNS is just a new technology that delivers internet services around the world. What and how that is used is determined by the builder that creates their ideas upon it.
I think this subject is about boundary nodes, respecting the laws of others and their countries to avoid incidents and the policy changes needed.
Some of us have very strong views but for us to survive the coming history correction in crypto the community will have a say with a more even handed approach.
The Internet Computer will be the Metaverse.
If you don’t believe me or don’t get it, I don’t have time to try to convince you, sorry 
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I’m not sure what this means. I thought ic0.app boundary nodes run icx-proxy processes themselves, which then translate HTTP calls to IC calls. How would you point your own icx-proxy to a boundary node?
When you start icx proxy you give it a host. I think we give it ic0.app. I’m trying to figure out if that means we are using a boundary node as a gateway or communicating with the core infrastructure and bypassing the boundary nodes.
Hi Folks,
Based on the replies and questions on this thread, we (DFINITY) thought we would share some clarity regarding the edge infrastructure of the IC (boundary nodes). We thought we’d share the vision/design and compare with the state of the world to see the gaps.
The Vision
The vision and design intent for boundary nodes is:
- Boundary nodes aid in canister discoverability and scale query call performance.
- Boundary nodes can perform content filtering - Based on discussions with the community, the design intent is that the IC should also use boundary nodes for content filtering, an idea that came from the community, not DFINITY. Without going into the whole design rationale (you can click on the link and read more), some folks on this thread mentioned that this design decision was not formalized via an NNS Motion proposal. We think that is a reasonable ask and will submit an NNS motion proposal for this.
- Boundary nodes are run by many entities - Very importantly, the vision is that many entities run many boundary nodes and that boundary node deployment be managed by the NNS, similarly to replica nodes today.
The State of the World
As of writing this post, there is a gap between vision and implementation.
- Boundary nodes do help with canister discoverability
- Boundary nodes can and do filter content so they can stay online in their jurisdictions
- Boundary nodes are NOT yet run by many different entities.
At high level, the main reason that boundary nodes are not yet run by many entities is organizational focus. I will explain in simple terms:
- Boundary Nodes need TLS certificates to establish a secure connection with users’ browsers.
- To do this in a decentralized (many entities) and secure way, IC needs to have tailored Multiparty computation (MPC) for efficient TLS session establishment, which does not exist today and is a very complex piece of cryptography that will take time to develop.
- The researchers and engineers at DFINITY who are scheduled to work on this are currently focused on finishing Threshold ECDSA and Bitcoin integration which needs to be finished first.
Our belief is that once these big projects are shipped, we can focus on MPC for TLS.
I realize I stayed high level, but that should give folks in the community the understanding through the mountain of details and facts
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Boundary nodes aid in canister discoverability and scale query call performance
Do you mind clarifying this point? My understanding was that boundary nodes were the only way to “discover” (or otherwise talk to) canisters. I wasn’t aware that it was possible to directly call replicas without going through a boundary node.
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