I deeply admire the vision of the Internet Computer and its goal to create a fully decentralized, scalable infrastructure that can challenge centralized cloud services like AWS and Google Cloud. However, given the current landscape, I have a few concerns and questions about the long-term governance and philosophy of ICP:
Transparency and Centralization Risks:
How does the Dfinity Foundation plan to ensure that the Internet Computer does not fall into the same pattern of monopolization as centralized cloud services? Specifically, how will you prevent a small number of node providers or large ICP holders from dominating governance or infrastructure in the future?
Foundation’s Role and Exit Strategy:
As the Internet Computer grows, how and when does Dfinity plan to step back and hand over more control to the community? What specific milestones or conditions will signal this transition to full decentralization?
Governance and Policy Changes:
Given that the Network Nervous System (NNS) can enact protocol changes, how does the foundation balance rapid innovation with the need for stability and protection of individual developers, investors, and dApp creators? What safeguards exist to prevent large stakeholders from passing self-serving policies at the expense of the broader community?
I believe in the potential of the Internet Computer, but ensuring its openness and decentralization is key to maintaining trust. I’d love to hear your thoughts and plans on these important aspects!
I would also add - do DFINITY have some ideas to attract exactly those giants to participate in the ICP, as node providers? If so, that will really contribute for very fast transition from Web2 to Web3, IMO.
But image that this happens… won’t it also cause unfair competition in with the smaller participants and concentrate the proof-of-work in the hands of the corporations again, with very little profit for the small providers with a few servers?
There are decentralization requirements in many places. Check out discussions like this one on the ‘target topology.’
It’s all a work in progress on multiple fronts. One pretty public example is Grants for voting neurons, another less visible one is to open up the big monorepo to external PRs. Not there yet, but I expect it to happen in the next few months.
Can you define ‘full decentralization’? This sounds like a marketing term that is very hard to define in engineering terms.
The same way you do. Everyone tries to make the best decision possible at any given point in time. What would be an ideal answer to this question to you?
Voting power. Also the ongoing effort to give more voting power to smaller entities like the grants I linked above.
Why would we make such plans? At the moment we have more than enough nodes and multiple aspiring node providers lined up that are ready to go once the network needs more capacity. That said I don’t work closely on that part, so I don’t know what plans do actually exist.
No, this is not how ICP consensus works. Read up on the target topology linked earlier in my answer and you’ll see how much they are allowed to contribute at most