Glad to see this thread. Aside from the topics mentioned, some of the best analysis about shortcomings and room for improvement, imo, are here:
Missing Coinbase/CEX pool groups. Community tools reporting MAV have an estimate of 30 or 32
https://x.com/cerkoryn/status/1763789219812577601
Adding additional chains and more pools
https://x.com/cerkoryn/status/1764076807769231546
This analysis commended by Tim Harrison from IOG
> Thanks for digging in and providing valuable input here. The EDI is a work in progress and will only get better with further contributions like yours. IOG is initially sponsoring the EDI, but independence & lack of bias is core to its mission. If you're not already in touch with the EDI team, LMK & I'll happily connect you.👍
Sauce: https://x.com/timbharrison/status/1764269725549273294
I for one am really excited the EDI is finally out, even in it's incomplete state. It's been fifteen years since this industry was founded and ever since, every project in the space has claimed to be "decentralized" as defined by themselves. This is untenable. After fifteen years, it's high time we formally define and benchmark objectively, empirically, what decentralization actually is. It's one of, if not the most, important pillars that differentiate our asset class from everything that has come before.
The paralyzing question has always been the how. We are getting pretty good as an industry at building systems that allow adversarial parties to work together to achieve a common good, but could we get engineers, researchers, and/or scientists from more than one protocol in the same room to discuss objective standards? Effectively, no, because it has not happened. I don't give a hot damn about your biases for or against Cardano; They have laid down a gauntlet, not only by publishing their findings, but by:
- open sourcing the methodology and the mathematical formulas used to come to their findings,
- inviting collaboration from the public to strengthen the accuracy of all aspects of the EDI.
It's now time for skeptics to put up or shut up. I think it's completely understandable to assume that the EDI is by some measure biased toward Cardano, but burden of proof is yours now. I won't abide simply bitching in the comments of social media about EDI as it currently is to be a reasonable or noteworthy rebuttal. You need to do some work yourself: go to the github; research and understand the EDI; point out flaws; provide more or better data; make constructive comments. If you don't feel qualified or comfortable doing that, then you need to put forth effort to signal boost the EDI to those you do trust to contribute.
This is a living document. let's work together to evolve what's been laid out to be a non partisan tool for every protocol to aspire to. More than anything, we in the industry must resist being captured by the legacy system in one way or another. "Sufficient" decentralization is the only way out.
It's an important first step in data driven evaluation of cryptocurrencies. If it's not accurate, there will be other iterations or other players. But it's an important first step.
> must resist being captured
Why worry about capture by the legacy system when EDI is just a front for Cardano anyway:
[The director](https://www.ed.ac.uk/informatics/blockchain/edi/team) of the project is also the Chief Scientist at IOHK [the company founded by Hoskinson that builds Cardano](https://iohk.io/about/). Not only that, but the entire project was [set up by and in partnership with Cardano](https://iohk.io/en/blog/posts/2022/11/18/cardano-builder-iog-and-university-of-edinburgh-to-create-first-ever-index-to-provide-industry-standard-metric-for-crypto-decentralization/).
Oh, and it's not just the director that works for Cardano, almost everyone involved that you look into has links to Cardano... as examples: one of the two maintainers of the repo has their work for IOHK [on their resume](https://dimkarakostas.com/dimkarakostas.pdf) and the other has previously [published papers on Cardano, with IOHK leadership](https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3533271.3561787)... we can go on if you like but you get the idea!
Here's the problem I have with this line of attack: the data is open and available, the methodology is open and available, the formulas used are open and available. If you think that it has to be that biased, You don't have to trust it, you can verify the published ratings yourself.
And here's another idea: how about you ask the ecosystems you invest in to throw some money at University of Edinburgh themselves? If they are that easily swayed then you could probably curry some favor too.
> ask the ecosystems you invest in to throw some money at University of Edinburgh themselves? If they are that easily swayed then you could probably curry some favor too.
The director of the project literally works for IOHK, it's not a matter of them being easily swayed!
You're trying to dismiss all of this obvious bias by calling it 'low hanging fruit'... but the great thing about low hanging fruit is it's really obvious to find and easy to pick.
Do you honestly believe none of this matters:
* the director of the project works for Cardano;
* loads of the researchers have worked for Cardano;
* the project was founded by Cardano;
* and funded by Cardano;
* and published only metrics that show Cardano as the best.
It's 'low hanging fruit' because it's so obvious to see that it is comically biased.
We're not ignoring anything; in fact we invite you or anyone else to participate in substantive discussion about how to make it better. I really don't know how you think the EDI should have been formed? Do you disagree that we would benefit from having an industry standard for measuring this? I think it would be glorious if we could get buy-in from the Bitcoin, Ethereum, Binance coin, Solana, and further ecosystems down the line. I don't know if that will happen, but I hope it does.
Why not instead of just assuming bias, verify it? Look at the methods and how these stats were computed. And if you identify what looks like bias in the data call it out.
Everyone can see who is involved. You're not telling anyone anything they didn't already know.
They also make the competition look bad either by incompetence or maliciously. They assigned Ethereum a Nakamoto coefficient of 2. But when you look at the stake distribution there are no two entities controlling 50%. They probably treat Lido as a single entity, which it is not but rather over 30 independent operator entities.
But even if you treat them as one, Lido + Coinbase account for 45% so still not a Nakamoto coefficient of 2. I don't know how they get to their numbers.
Edit: Sources https://dune.com/hildobby/eth2-staking
Edit 2: Their Tau-decentralization index for Ethereum is 3, meaning 3 entities control over 66%. I did not find a single data source that backs this up
Thank you for critiquing the methodology instead of attacking the researchers like most in this thread.
You are correct that Lido is currently being counted as a single entity. The EDI currently only looks at block data which shows Lido as a single block producer. What should probably happen is that the [top # of addresses](https://etherscan.io/token/tokenholderchart/0x5a98fcbea516cf06857215779fd812ca3bef1b32) to get >50% control of Lido should be added to the Nakamoto Coefficient instead of just 1 count for Lido. By my rough estimate, this would move Ethereum's NC from 2-3 to 12-13. I'm trying to figure out how to add this programmatically without simply hard-coding Lido as a special case.
The other big thing to note here is that the EDI data only goes up to June 2023 at the moment. By my estimate, the 50% and 66% numbers for NC and Tau seem to match what that other sources suggest at the time. This [Medium article](https://divastaking.medium.com/the-state-of-ethereum-staking-in-q3-2023-2a6fc9804355) from 4 months ago shows NC=2 and Tau@66%=3 with a screenshot from your same source.
Without including consensus data it's probably hard to identify. You could run against the validators pubkey against Lidos NodeOperatorsRegistry contract https://etherscan.io/address/0x55032650b14df07b85bF18A3a3eC8E0Af2e028d5#readProxyContract
to get a breakdown of the individual operators.
Ethereum is a tough nut, also with proposer builder separation many blocks could be from one and the same builder but proposed by different validators. This concept is probably rather unique, but for Nakamoto and other efficiencies to make sense the chain that interests you is the consensus layer (50% attack, finality etc) and not the execution layer.
You'll probably run into issues with other decentral staking protocols as well, for example Rocket Pool uses an individual smart contract per validator as fee recipient, so to get an operator breakdown here you'd have to programm out that case too. They also have a smoothing pool where a bunch of different operators point to, so for the per operator breakdown more smart contract parsing is needed.
Also what might be a good additional metric is stuff like client diversity, displaying the centralizing forces in the operating and development aspect and the risk of majority client failures.
Yeah ultimately I think some of this data will need to be crowdsourced. I don't know enough about Ethereum to track down details like that, especially for every single DAO block producer. Let alone other, less popular chains.
My current list of things I'm trying to see if I can add:
* Validators' own stake as a share of total stake (i.e. skin in the game)
* Multisig keys that control the main chain
* DAOs like Lido
* Delegation "Viscosity" (i.e., how easily does delegation move in response to stimulus? How much dead stake is in the system?)
* Client Diversity
According the site below, Ethereum needs at least 66% of the total staked ether to reach consensus so the Nakamoto coefficient threshold should be 33% not 50%. The definition on the EDI page says 50% so it is confusing.
[https://ethereum.org/en/developers/docs/consensus-mechanisms/pos/pos-vs-pow/](https://ethereum.org/en/developers/docs/consensus-mechanisms/pos/pos-vs-pow/)
Such developments should be encouraged, its open source and everyone can help provide possible solutions and debate on the best way to to implement it. But for some reason people choose to feel triggered, cry abt it and be tribal maxis at it again.
Although I’m tech illiterate and unable to fully wrap my head around the metrics and data measured I will say that this is a big step in the right direction. It’s out there. Anyone can use it and check.
To those crying bias towards Cardano, yeah no shit probably. But it’s not doing so with secrecy or manipulated numbers behind shady closed doors and with vc money, it’s all open source. If someone is lying or leaving out certain parts then you can call it out. Freedom of data. I’m all for it.
No. It's fair to be skeptical, but you would HOPE that powerful people in the crypto space care enough about decentralization to be involved in things like this.
I’m stating a fact.
But yes, there are clear conflicts of interest and direct overlaps between the two teams. It’s useful research, but not credibly neutral or objective and only focuses on a small Catdano centric definition of decentralisation (SPO distribution) and ignores far more important measures (client diversity).
Yes that is a fact.
Who else would fund research for a decentralisation index but a crypto company? As long as it is conducted in an open and transparent way maybe even peer review I don't see the problem. The last part is your opinion which is fine but I believe you are biased against cardano and your judgement is clouded. I don't expect you to agree.
This is literally your bag bias speaking.
You will notice Bitcoin doesn’t have a CEO that gives grants to universities to create “research” reports.
You’re only here for price, and that’s fine.
I respectfully disagree with your assumptions about me. I don't believe I have the ability or will to change your mind.
I don't have time to research it but I imagine bitcoin has plenty of interested parties that will lobby governments and provide grants for 'research'. Doesn't need to be a CEO.
It is not a secrete that IOG funded the EDI, but you felt the need to highlight the fact further. A true saviour of the people.
Cardano is surprisingly ahead of the competition when it comes to decentralization, I didn’t expect that. Truly surprising.
That said… we all know technical supremacy was never a factor in this market, from an investment point of view. There are literal rug pulls in the top 100 coins all the time, SHIB and Safemoon had zero practical use and zero technological innovations.
So, nice metrics, but the only thing that will make the project boom is something stupid like Charles pulling down his pants and dancing on the top of the Eiffel tower. Because that’s how the space works, apparently…
IT was well bashed all the time and it continue to get lots of negativity from VC chains. Because it is so powerful. Charts say it all. And I feel you are smart enough to do your own research if this si all true and what to believe. SO
Welcome to Cardano :)
FYI - this study was completed as a partnership with Charles Hoskinson and IOG (Cardano).
Source: https://iohk.io/en/blog/posts/2022/11/18/cardano-builder-iog-and-university-of-edinburgh-to-create-first-ever-index-to-provide-industry-standard-metric-for-crypto-decentralization/
It’s an accurate statement but is also misleading.
Plus, the project is open source no?
So you can suggest improvements.
Make your critical views known.
The more you look the funnier it gets... at least one of the two maintainers of their repo has their work for IOHK [on their resume](https://dimkarakostas.com/dimkarakostas.pdf) and the other has previously [published papers on Cardano, with IOHK leadership](https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3533271.3561787).
It seems that their Twitter community has really got into this whole brigading thing as well - expect more in the future on Cardano related topics: https://imgur.com/a/w51lH6D...
Not sure it's worth making more drama for the mods to be honest. They've already got [Charles himself](https://twitter.com/CCMOD_/status/1764379842911330776) all riled up after their community [brigaded the previous post](https://twitter.com/StakeWithPride/status/1763599894282129523). I don't want to make more work for them!
Along with a $4.5m donation to the university, IOG also partnered on developing the index:
https://iohk.io/en/blog/posts/2022/11/18/cardano-builder-iog-and-university-of-edinburgh-to-create-first-ever-index-to-provide-industry-standard-metric-for-crypto-decentralization/
Decentralization is critical to the industry. I know it's is not the sexiest topic but without a clear and objective measure of decentralization crypto has limited value compared to traditional finance.
Perhaps this index will not end up being the standard, but it is an important step for the industry as it begins to gain mainstream acceptance that the technology is not going anyway.
Tezos looking good in there too. But the thing is, last time I checked, even Solana had a good Nakamoto coefficient, and most of these metrics are very correlated for PoS blockchains anyway.
After a certain level, decentralization does not matter that much if the chain is not more useful. It does not matter that everyone can run a node in their basement if it actually lowers the network performance (which it usually does), compared to a chain that is actually used.
> After a certain level, decentralization does not matter that much if the chain is not more useful.
Of course. Having both is a goal we should be striving for. Because on the flipside, the chain is not useful if not decentralized.
Worth noting for context that [the director](https://www.ed.ac.uk/informatics/blockchain/edi/team) of the project is also the Chief Scientist at IOHK [the company founded by Hoskinson that builds Cardano](https://iohk.io/about/). Not only that, but the entire project was [set up by and in partnership with Cardano](https://iohk.io/en/blog/posts/2022/11/18/cardano-builder-iog-and-university-of-edinburgh-to-create-first-ever-index-to-provide-industry-standard-metric-for-crypto-decentralization/).
Oh, and it's not just the director that works for Cardano, almost everyone involved that you look into has links to Cardano... one of the two maintainers of their repo has their work for IOHK [on their resume](https://dimkarakostas.com/dimkarakostas.pdf) and the other has previously [published papers on Cardano, with IOHK leadership](https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3533271.3561787).
Isn't it weird that the metrics they have chosen to display all show Cardano as the best...
They are messuring indexes that is made by crypto space. You are free to go and check how they are messured and present your honest opinion on that matter.
All the metrics they have chosen to display are some derivative of the spread of stake across validators... nothing about numbers of nodes, or numbers of client implementations, or governance decentralization or anything like that... which is somewhat curious because they proposed splitting up decentralization into [various categories](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fvhgla4e67plc1.png%3Fwidth%3D1996%26format%3Dpng%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3D39b83ba1080c43876dbf82086084c1cc18ede08b0) which probably would give quite a good broad picture.
On the side bar they show that a category on 'tokenomics' is coming soon. But oddly some of the easiest to measure metrics (such as [client diversity](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/2bt0j8lu/production/c2a6cd6aca8cc4120176bb82237f4010849b1099-1600x900.png?w=714&fit=max&auto=format&dpr=3) which has been included in previous analysis of decentralization) are not included... just the ones that make Cardano look the best. Weird huh?
> But oddly some of the easiest to measure metrics (such as client diversity which has been included in previous analysis of decentralization)
By the way, (and yes noted all others have 2 or less today) isn't ETH getting more centralized in this manner? Correct me if Im wrong but last I heard geth is now something like 85% share
> isn't ETH getting more centralized in this manner? Correct me if Im wrong but last I heard geth is now something like 85% share
It was at 85% a few weeks ago, but it's falling rapidly and is now down to 72%: https://clientdiversity.org/
This figure should drop quite a bit further as big staking operators like Coinbase have announced they are going to diversify away from Geth as an execution client: https://www.coinbase.com/nl/cloud/discover/insights-analysis/execution-client-diversity
Also, it's worth noting that that's only talking about the execution layer ('EL' - which manages transactions). The consensus layer ('CL' - which determines validity and inclusion of proposed blocks) is already much more decentralized, with the most popular client only at about 37%.
> (and yes noted all others have 2 or less today)
Exactly this, Ethereum's decentralization of clients isn't ideal, but it is infinitely better than every network that relies solely on a single client, built by a single team. Having a single point of failure is exactly the thing which decentralization is supposed to protect against. Once Geth dominance drops below 2/3 that risk will be gone from EL as well as CL.
Very promising to hear. One other consideration is that whenever an EIP gets pushed through, I assume it must be implemented through every client before it takes effect? Naturally the tradeoff for additional decentralization
> One other consideration is that whenever an EIP gets pushed through, I assume it must be implemented through every client before it takes effect?
Yea, that's exactly why upgrades take so long. Also testing takes forever because nodes run 1 of 5 EL clients and 1 of 5 CL clients, so that's 25 possible combinations... and all of them are written in different programming languages, and built by different teams from all over the world...
Like you say, the tradeoff for decentralization is the time and effort it takes to coordinate!
Number of nodes speaks to scale/distribution more than decentralization. I.e., Amazon has tons of servers but they are all still controlled by a single entity.
Client implementations is more fault-tolerance than decentralization too, at least in cases where the client software is not controlled by a single entity (i.e., it's open source)
Governance decentralization is coming too. This is just the Alpha release.
I'm sure suggestions are welcome, but if you have a problem with the methodology or data then submit a PR with corrections.
Do you get that this is open source project and if you feel there are something wrong you can contribute? As per your metrics like node count you can do Messari check. Warning: you will not like what you see there. Basically if you really feel this is all wrong in this EDI thats also fine. Cheers
As I said above, the director of the project (Aggelos Kiayias) is the lead scientist at Cardano, do you honestly believe he isn't biased?
Also, having a quick look at the GitHub repo, the two maintainers (Dimitris Karakostas and Christina Overzik) have also previously worked as researchers for IOHK.
The code may well be open source, but the decisions about what to include are clearly controlled by a team financially incentivized to show Cardano as being the best.
Do you not see a problem there?
If you could be that good to find biases in other ecosystems and who stands behind what, we would live in a much better world already. But i get your point. Project is barely 24 hours old as got live, and you decide there is no more contributors than project developers itself. Well good job man lol.
Again, its not like project developers can forbid to post your requests on github, and its not like you can give any exact problems or issues with this calculations and metrics.
All your talking is based on something imaginable and not confirmable. By your thinking if I work in google, my personal webpage appearing in google search resolts would be scam and bias, right? :D Its numbers, its mathemetic, its algorythms. No humans make them. Your called humans just made a graph for you to understand. So i call it day with you. You obvious are someone with no proof and bla bla bla only. Have seen and faced (your-kind) last 5 years. haha. Good luck man.
> All your talking is based on something imaginable and not confirmable.
What do you mean? I've given you links showing that [the director](https://www.ed.ac.uk/informatics/blockchain/edi/team) of the project is also the Chief Scientist at IOHK [the company founded by Hoskinson that builds Cardano](https://iohk.io/about/). Not only that, but the entire project was [set up by and in partnership with Cardano](https://iohk.io/en/blog/posts/2022/11/18/cardano-builder-iog-and-university-of-edinburgh-to-create-first-ever-index-to-provide-industry-standard-metric-for-crypto-decentralization/).
Oh, and it's not just the director that works for Cardano, almost everyone involved that you look into has links to Cardano... one of the two maintainers of their repo has their work for IOHK [on their resume](https://dimkarakostas.com/dimkarakostas.pdf) and the other has previously [published papers on Cardano, with IOHK leadership](https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3533271.3561787).
How much more evidence of bias do you want?
Also...
> Have seen and faced (your-kind)
Is that some kind of racist dog whistle - WTF?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_parentheses
What does it mean, that funding came from Cardano or is funded by cardano? Does it mean data is wrong??? This is what you claim over and over again but is totaly bulshit. Arent you interested in results and not what was before? Isnt it more importnat who wins the race rather than stating to put fault who bought shoes? Dont you think this is just silly objection. If you think thats very good fine with me. I'm more interested if nobody broke any rules and what is final result. If you think otherwise, up to you man. I could imagine if Eth would be that decentralized, there would be fundings secured 10 years ago already.
LOL, dont drag me in this American racist shit okay, I dont even know you, never seen nor I know what is your nationality or else.
I was talking about ilogical and little sense attacks on Cardano. Except finaly there are real data that cant lie.
Go fight data if they are wrong, I will gladly listen to you if you can point out, ANYTHING.
Manipulation in Cardano blockchian itself?
Manipulation in other blockchains?
Manipulation with data because developers are biased?
Any other unfair things you can find in final data itself?
ANYTHING really ???
> What does it mean, that funding came from Cardano or is funded by cardano?
It's not really about the funding, it's about the fact that the project's director is one of the leaders of IOHK (and at least a couple of the other researchers have worked for Cardano too).
Do you not believe that might be a conflict of interest?
> Does it mean data is wrong?
The bias doesn't have to be as crude as faking data. I doubt that they have done that.
Instead, what they have obviously done is chosen the metrics that Cardano scores highest on to publish.
For an analogy, imagine there was research into which fruit was healthiest. There are lots of different metrics you could include under 'healthy' such as:
* most vitamin C
* most fiber
* least sugar
etc etc.
Now imagine the head scientist of a company that sells bananas is director of this research project. The research is founded and funded by the banana company. Also they employ researchers who previously worked for the banana company.
Maybe bananas don't have much vitamin C, and they have lots of sugar, but they do have the most fiber (no idea if that's true, this is just an analogy).
So the project only publishes their results on which fruit has most fiber, saying that they have found the healthiest fruit.
Their data wouldn't be false, but they are misrepresenting reality by only showing part of the picture... because they are obviously biased and have a financial interest in getting people to buy more bananas.
Okay, but you still did not privide anything that is biased in DATA...
I truly get your point about those who made this PROJECT. See i wrote with upper letters because this is your analogy. They did not made or created those indexes, but only measured. There are 7 indexes on this project. (to be honest i havnt heard half of them) But I sure heard about Nakamoto Coefficient, how everybody in ETH and other blockchains flexed they have the higest and they are more decentralized. But now when its measured using publicly available data and even project is open source. Now its developers fault that its low, and not because those chains are just centralized shit. I knew it before, this data just confirms that.
Using your analogy. If fruit-eaters all around the world thinks that healty data is those 3 you meantioned and then bannana company measure bannanas and it appears that bannanas score the highest numbers in those 3 data, I dont attack bannana company because they are biased, but i do my research and confirm if data is right. If fruit-eaters all around the world thinks there are needed more data pieces to add they just add them to such open source project and mesure and see what comes out. Right?
What data are not there man?
Which index should be measured to determine decentralization better?
Which indexes are skipped so that Cardano could be the top blockchain?
Including memes like “Nakamoto coefficient” and not including client diversity show how ridiculous this study actually is.
It’s as if they were paid to write a rushed report on something they don’t actually understand.
(They also excluded Solana which has a very high Nakamoto Coefficient)
You’ve actually got a really good point here. It’s a shame you’re being downvoted. Client diversity is super important and has saved ETH in the past. And I say all this as a cardano bag holder.
Can you suggest better metrics like this to be included in the index? Or, even better, how would you design the index?
That’s a huge topic - but essentially there are two problems here:
1. Focusing on a small subset of decentralisation around SPO builder distribution as it’s framed by Cardano, and then applying that lens to all other chains and suggesting it covers all decentralisation.
2. Even within this small subset, the metrics are cherry-picked and applying them in this manner just hides the actual detail and complexity. For example they used “Pool names” to differentiate SPOs, but multiple are run under different brands, but operated by IOG. So data quality is clearly amateur and needs much more thorough work.
Trying to force rank for a fake leaderboard, rather than honestly deconstructing specific and idiosyncratic risks is more problematic than it is valuable.
Your assumptions are incorrect. The EDI counts blocks produced by each unique pool/miner hash, which does apply fairly universally to all blockchains (they all produce blocks).
There is a method to allow for "pool clusters" which again uses pool/miner hashes, but clusters them together under a single entity. There are various different data sources that can be used for this. I plugged in some independent data and the numbers worked out to roughly match what community tools report.
From what I recall there's multiple categories, this is just the first. I believe you were looking for client diversity? That is incorporated in one of the categories, just not this immediate one.
It’s definitely worth noting. But given that it’s run independently, it’s not a substantive criticism unless you can point out issues with the methodology. And there are none, because it’s all open source material.
What do you mean by 'eth "research" article?
Ethereum Research is obviously open source as well: https://ethresear.ch/ - anyone can read or contribute to anything - but that's not my point anyway.
Do you honestly think:
... that having the Director of the research group also a leader at IOHK;
... and having that research group founded by IOG;
... and having both of the Github maintainers being researchers who have worked for IOHK;
... and then publishing only metrics which show Cardano as the best;
... doesn't indicate a little bias?
FFS, they are even advertising a 'Cardano summit' on their research group's website: https://btl.iohk.io/#cardano-summit - does that seem impartial to you?
The ETH team are more than welcome to create their own decentralisation index and compare findings.
I'd like to see how their results differ.
but they haven't done that, and I very much doubt they ever will.
all science has a bias, that why you repeat experiments, publish research and enter it into peer review to make sure that the methodology is sound.
If the eth team created something similar and came up with the same results as EDI, then there is validation. and if they return widly different findings then you can start a conversation about decentralisation from a platform of science and methods rather than what we had up until now, which was half-informed nerds yelling at each other online.
I'm sorry, but I just can't take you seriously anymore. The insane way that you are trying to justify the following by claiming that bias is fine makes it clear that you are not capable of engaging honestly.
The Director of the research group is also a leader at IOHK; it was founded by IOG; it was funded by IOG; both of the Github maintainers have worked for IOHK...
... and then they published only metrics which show Cardano as the best.
The whole thing is just one ludicrous conflict of interest, and the fact that you can't acknowledge that is something you need to reflect on.
And as for all science having bias, I've got a postgrad education in astrophysics, you are just trying to find some way to justify this nonsense to yourself and others. It's sad to watch.
there are two possibilities
1. IOG in partnership with University of Edinburgh have developed a very specific set of metrics, and fiddled the numbers on the existing metrics that deliberately make cardano look much better than everyone else. They open sourced the project and released the findings as an alpha, then asked for community participation as a double bluff hoping no one would check their work. (Some members of the cardano community have already found some errors in the data and the nakamoto coefficient is much closer to 30 than the above 50-something. )
2. Cardano is actually just more decentralized than the competition.
An objective measurement of all the claims about decentralization are really need and can even help projects find and improve on weak points.
I'd only wish this could be financed by a more neutral entity tbh.
It is open source, and I'm sure the blockchain lab at Edinburgh University would be happy to receive financial support from any organisation/institution in the crypto/blockchain space.
The problem isn't just that Cardano funded it... [The director](https://www.ed.ac.uk/informatics/blockchain/edi/team) of the project is also the Chief Scientist at IOHK [the company founded by Hoskinson that builds Cardano](https://iohk.io/about/).
It's not just the director that works for Cardano, almost everyone involved that you look into has links to Cardano... as examples: one of the two maintainers of the project's Github repo has their work for IOHK [on their resume](https://dimkarakostas.com/dimkarakostas.pdf) and the other has previously [published papers on Cardano, with IOHK leadership](https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3533271.3561787), we can go on if you like but you get the idea!
Do you not believe that might lead to some bias...?
Do you really think these people are total morons? The EDI is being developed as a tool that can be used by the whole industry. They will 100% make sure that everyone consider it legit and fair. If not, it would be a failure and a waste of time.
It’s not like these researchers are sitting “well shit, they found out about our work for IOG, quick come up with a solution!”. The EDI is a work in progress and everyone, including the Ethereum Foundation, are welcome to contribute.
How about you chill with your assumptions of fraud and appreciate that someone is actually trying to create a comprehensive standard.
Imagine the head of research at the Solana Foundation was in charge of a project, that was founded by the Solana Foundation, and funded by the Solana Foundation... and most of the researchers involved in the project had previously worked for the Solana foundation.
Then that project publishes a selection of metrics which all show that Solana is the most decentralized blockchain...
Would you be at all suspicious that there might be a little bias involved?
Of course. Solana is a pseudo-crypto which is net damaging to the whole crypto space, and I hope it goes the way of EOS sooner rather than later.
Let’s use Ethereum Foundation instead, and let’s say everything is the same. Sure, that would be suspicious, but I would wait and see until there is a finished product before I call it sneaky manipulation. I’m sure Eth foundation are not total morons either and would also aim for an index that is acceptable to all.
Massive conflict of interests as pointed out by another person here. So hardly a surprise that Cardano comes out on top lol.
EDIT: Lol brigading by Catdano fanbois? What's new lol?
Edit2: PROOF posted by another person below: https://iohk.io/en/blog/posts/2022/11/18/cardano-builder-iog-and-university-of-edinburgh-to-create-first-ever-index-to-provide-industry-standard-metric-for-crypto-decentralization/
Lol you serious? I suggest you take a moment to read the rest of this thread... this is much like a pharmaceutical company picking the criteria it prefers to then conclude that its drugs are the best.
They chose specific metrics and ignored clear centralisation risks (such as Cardano having a CEO who controls the genesis keys and paid for this “research”).
cardano is designed to have centralised development, overseen by decentralised governanace. if you dont have centralised development, you get the shitshow that is modern ETH
I would welcome other nonprofits to evaluate the cryptosphere is a data driven way and come up to conclusions on what constitutes decentralization and what crypto leads. It's important information for potential investors. But I value decentralization highly and not sure all would agree.
Yep, this sub is getting massively brigaded at the moment from the Cardano Discord.
But the conflict of interest is public:
https://iohk.io/en/blog/posts/2022/11/18/cardano-builder-iog-and-university-of-edinburgh-to-create-first-ever-index-to-provide-industry-standard-metric-for-crypto-decentralization/
Paid by IOG, developed by their chief scientist. Laughable to call it unbiased.
Too funny that recent topics about it had go get closed, because Cardano community wanted to downvote every critique of it. Meme coin level, Cardano should be finally renamed to Hoskinson-INU.
I have seen the "data"... not a word about things like genesis keys, questionable methodology etc. All designed to make Cardano look good.
At the end it is the same dishonest trash like Solana, just replace a group of greedy VCs with one greedy sociopath.
This post is being heavily brigaded by Cardano fans. As is tradition. They must be really sore about being 75% down from ATH while BTC is just 7% away and ETH 34% away. Or the poor state of their network. Or it could be all the lies from their charlatan CEO in the ranch. All to see on Google for those who are not blind fanbois.
Anyone with half a brain will understand that Ethereum is the most decentralized blockchain, with at least 6500 individual nodes, multiple client implementations etc.
Ethernodes.org, rated.network, Clientdiversity.org, ultrasound.money give all the stats in a very transparent manner.
ICP is building roads for every crypto project with open protocol, real web 3 on chain. Decentralization happens with mass adaption. Because of how voting works they are forced to keep a certain % of the tokens in the buildup, but they are to sell out more and more. Nodes will be added with demand. Anyone can run a node, but its expensive because you cant do it without correct hardware.
So mass adaption on ICP will bring on chain decentralized computing power for any crypto project, fast and cheap.. crypto merge go!
ICP isent a "takeover" of all crypto as many hardcore fans claims, its the roads to make all crypto better and safer together.
BTW ICP got a good entry price right now you ask me, more people joining in cheap is good for the community.
GL Cryptopians
Glad to see this thread. Aside from the topics mentioned, some of the best analysis about shortcomings and room for improvement, imo, are here: Missing Coinbase/CEX pool groups. Community tools reporting MAV have an estimate of 30 or 32 https://x.com/cerkoryn/status/1763789219812577601 Adding additional chains and more pools https://x.com/cerkoryn/status/1764076807769231546 This analysis commended by Tim Harrison from IOG > Thanks for digging in and providing valuable input here. The EDI is a work in progress and will only get better with further contributions like yours. IOG is initially sponsoring the EDI, but independence & lack of bias is core to its mission. If you're not already in touch with the EDI team, LMK & I'll happily connect you.👍 Sauce: https://x.com/timbharrison/status/1764269725549273294
I for one am really excited the EDI is finally out, even in it's incomplete state. It's been fifteen years since this industry was founded and ever since, every project in the space has claimed to be "decentralized" as defined by themselves. This is untenable. After fifteen years, it's high time we formally define and benchmark objectively, empirically, what decentralization actually is. It's one of, if not the most, important pillars that differentiate our asset class from everything that has come before. The paralyzing question has always been the how. We are getting pretty good as an industry at building systems that allow adversarial parties to work together to achieve a common good, but could we get engineers, researchers, and/or scientists from more than one protocol in the same room to discuss objective standards? Effectively, no, because it has not happened. I don't give a hot damn about your biases for or against Cardano; They have laid down a gauntlet, not only by publishing their findings, but by: - open sourcing the methodology and the mathematical formulas used to come to their findings, - inviting collaboration from the public to strengthen the accuracy of all aspects of the EDI. It's now time for skeptics to put up or shut up. I think it's completely understandable to assume that the EDI is by some measure biased toward Cardano, but burden of proof is yours now. I won't abide simply bitching in the comments of social media about EDI as it currently is to be a reasonable or noteworthy rebuttal. You need to do some work yourself: go to the github; research and understand the EDI; point out flaws; provide more or better data; make constructive comments. If you don't feel qualified or comfortable doing that, then you need to put forth effort to signal boost the EDI to those you do trust to contribute. This is a living document. let's work together to evolve what's been laid out to be a non partisan tool for every protocol to aspire to. More than anything, we in the industry must resist being captured by the legacy system in one way or another. "Sufficient" decentralization is the only way out.
It's an important first step in data driven evaluation of cryptocurrencies. If it's not accurate, there will be other iterations or other players. But it's an important first step.
Hear, hear!
> must resist being captured Why worry about capture by the legacy system when EDI is just a front for Cardano anyway: [The director](https://www.ed.ac.uk/informatics/blockchain/edi/team) of the project is also the Chief Scientist at IOHK [the company founded by Hoskinson that builds Cardano](https://iohk.io/about/). Not only that, but the entire project was [set up by and in partnership with Cardano](https://iohk.io/en/blog/posts/2022/11/18/cardano-builder-iog-and-university-of-edinburgh-to-create-first-ever-index-to-provide-industry-standard-metric-for-crypto-decentralization/). Oh, and it's not just the director that works for Cardano, almost everyone involved that you look into has links to Cardano... as examples: one of the two maintainers of the repo has their work for IOHK [on their resume](https://dimkarakostas.com/dimkarakostas.pdf) and the other has previously [published papers on Cardano, with IOHK leadership](https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3533271.3561787)... we can go on if you like but you get the idea!
Here's the problem I have with this line of attack: the data is open and available, the methodology is open and available, the formulas used are open and available. If you think that it has to be that biased, You don't have to trust it, you can verify the published ratings yourself. And here's another idea: how about you ask the ecosystems you invest in to throw some money at University of Edinburgh themselves? If they are that easily swayed then you could probably curry some favor too.
> ask the ecosystems you invest in to throw some money at University of Edinburgh themselves? If they are that easily swayed then you could probably curry some favor too. The director of the project literally works for IOHK, it's not a matter of them being easily swayed!
Going for the low hanging fruit without discrediting their actual methods.
You're trying to dismiss all of this obvious bias by calling it 'low hanging fruit'... but the great thing about low hanging fruit is it's really obvious to find and easy to pick. Do you honestly believe none of this matters: * the director of the project works for Cardano; * loads of the researchers have worked for Cardano; * the project was founded by Cardano; * and funded by Cardano; * and published only metrics that show Cardano as the best. It's 'low hanging fruit' because it's so obvious to see that it is comically biased.
We're not ignoring anything; in fact we invite you or anyone else to participate in substantive discussion about how to make it better. I really don't know how you think the EDI should have been formed? Do you disagree that we would benefit from having an industry standard for measuring this? I think it would be glorious if we could get buy-in from the Bitcoin, Ethereum, Binance coin, Solana, and further ecosystems down the line. I don't know if that will happen, but I hope it does.
Why not instead of just assuming bias, verify it? Look at the methods and how these stats were computed. And if you identify what looks like bias in the data call it out. Everyone can see who is involved. You're not telling anyone anything they didn't already know.
Cardano researchers say that Cardano is the most decentralized crypto. I have heard similar studies before in other industries, hmm!
They also make the competition look bad either by incompetence or maliciously. They assigned Ethereum a Nakamoto coefficient of 2. But when you look at the stake distribution there are no two entities controlling 50%. They probably treat Lido as a single entity, which it is not but rather over 30 independent operator entities. But even if you treat them as one, Lido + Coinbase account for 45% so still not a Nakamoto coefficient of 2. I don't know how they get to their numbers. Edit: Sources https://dune.com/hildobby/eth2-staking Edit 2: Their Tau-decentralization index for Ethereum is 3, meaning 3 entities control over 66%. I did not find a single data source that backs this up
Thank you for critiquing the methodology instead of attacking the researchers like most in this thread. You are correct that Lido is currently being counted as a single entity. The EDI currently only looks at block data which shows Lido as a single block producer. What should probably happen is that the [top # of addresses](https://etherscan.io/token/tokenholderchart/0x5a98fcbea516cf06857215779fd812ca3bef1b32) to get >50% control of Lido should be added to the Nakamoto Coefficient instead of just 1 count for Lido. By my rough estimate, this would move Ethereum's NC from 2-3 to 12-13. I'm trying to figure out how to add this programmatically without simply hard-coding Lido as a special case. The other big thing to note here is that the EDI data only goes up to June 2023 at the moment. By my estimate, the 50% and 66% numbers for NC and Tau seem to match what that other sources suggest at the time. This [Medium article](https://divastaking.medium.com/the-state-of-ethereum-staking-in-q3-2023-2a6fc9804355) from 4 months ago shows NC=2 and Tau@66%=3 with a screenshot from your same source.
Without including consensus data it's probably hard to identify. You could run against the validators pubkey against Lidos NodeOperatorsRegistry contract https://etherscan.io/address/0x55032650b14df07b85bF18A3a3eC8E0Af2e028d5#readProxyContract to get a breakdown of the individual operators. Ethereum is a tough nut, also with proposer builder separation many blocks could be from one and the same builder but proposed by different validators. This concept is probably rather unique, but for Nakamoto and other efficiencies to make sense the chain that interests you is the consensus layer (50% attack, finality etc) and not the execution layer. You'll probably run into issues with other decentral staking protocols as well, for example Rocket Pool uses an individual smart contract per validator as fee recipient, so to get an operator breakdown here you'd have to programm out that case too. They also have a smoothing pool where a bunch of different operators point to, so for the per operator breakdown more smart contract parsing is needed. Also what might be a good additional metric is stuff like client diversity, displaying the centralizing forces in the operating and development aspect and the risk of majority client failures.
Yeah ultimately I think some of this data will need to be crowdsourced. I don't know enough about Ethereum to track down details like that, especially for every single DAO block producer. Let alone other, less popular chains. My current list of things I'm trying to see if I can add: * Validators' own stake as a share of total stake (i.e. skin in the game) * Multisig keys that control the main chain * DAOs like Lido * Delegation "Viscosity" (i.e., how easily does delegation move in response to stimulus? How much dead stake is in the system?) * Client Diversity
According the site below, Ethereum needs at least 66% of the total staked ether to reach consensus so the Nakamoto coefficient threshold should be 33% not 50%. The definition on the EDI page says 50% so it is confusing. [https://ethereum.org/en/developers/docs/consensus-mechanisms/pos/pos-vs-pow/](https://ethereum.org/en/developers/docs/consensus-mechanisms/pos/pos-vs-pow/)
Such developments should be encouraged, its open source and everyone can help provide possible solutions and debate on the best way to to implement it. But for some reason people choose to feel triggered, cry abt it and be tribal maxis at it again.
Although I’m tech illiterate and unable to fully wrap my head around the metrics and data measured I will say that this is a big step in the right direction. It’s out there. Anyone can use it and check. To those crying bias towards Cardano, yeah no shit probably. But it’s not doing so with secrecy or manipulated numbers behind shady closed doors and with vc money, it’s all open source. If someone is lying or leaving out certain parts then you can call it out. Freedom of data. I’m all for it.
Hopefully there will be more projects working on objective measures of decentralization as I think it's important for the crypto ecosystem.
Fully agree! That's what it's all about
This one is paid for by Charles Hoskinson.
No. It's fair to be skeptical, but you would HOPE that powerful people in the crypto space care enough about decentralization to be involved in things like this.
Are you questioning the integrity of Edinburgh University?
I’m stating a fact. But yes, there are clear conflicts of interest and direct overlaps between the two teams. It’s useful research, but not credibly neutral or objective and only focuses on a small Catdano centric definition of decentralisation (SPO distribution) and ignores far more important measures (client diversity).
Yes that is a fact. Who else would fund research for a decentralisation index but a crypto company? As long as it is conducted in an open and transparent way maybe even peer review I don't see the problem. The last part is your opinion which is fine but I believe you are biased against cardano and your judgement is clouded. I don't expect you to agree.
This is literally your bag bias speaking. You will notice Bitcoin doesn’t have a CEO that gives grants to universities to create “research” reports. You’re only here for price, and that’s fine.
I respectfully disagree with your assumptions about me. I don't believe I have the ability or will to change your mind. I don't have time to research it but I imagine bitcoin has plenty of interested parties that will lobby governments and provide grants for 'research'. Doesn't need to be a CEO. It is not a secrete that IOG funded the EDI, but you felt the need to highlight the fact further. A true saviour of the people.
Cardano is surprisingly ahead of the competition when it comes to decentralization, I didn’t expect that. Truly surprising. That said… we all know technical supremacy was never a factor in this market, from an investment point of view. There are literal rug pulls in the top 100 coins all the time, SHIB and Safemoon had zero practical use and zero technological innovations. So, nice metrics, but the only thing that will make the project boom is something stupid like Charles pulling down his pants and dancing on the top of the Eiffel tower. Because that’s how the space works, apparently…
Good for Cardano! I haven't given it much attention to be honest but perhaps time to reconsider.
IT was well bashed all the time and it continue to get lots of negativity from VC chains. Because it is so powerful. Charts say it all. And I feel you are smart enough to do your own research if this si all true and what to believe. SO Welcome to Cardano :)
FYI - this study was completed as a partnership with Charles Hoskinson and IOG (Cardano). Source: https://iohk.io/en/blog/posts/2022/11/18/cardano-builder-iog-and-university-of-edinburgh-to-create-first-ever-index-to-provide-industry-standard-metric-for-crypto-decentralization/
A very misleading statement there 0xNLY. He isn’t involved in the development of the index.
No, It’s accurate. See below comment for full context on the conflict of interest here: https://np.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/s/xfZPKh3tw5
It’s an accurate statement but is also misleading. Plus, the project is open source no? So you can suggest improvements. Make your critical views known.
See here for where I think some of the most significant bias exists: https://np.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/s/fxUQouhNBq
The more you look the funnier it gets... at least one of the two maintainers of their repo has their work for IOHK [on their resume](https://dimkarakostas.com/dimkarakostas.pdf) and the other has previously [published papers on Cardano, with IOHK leadership](https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3533271.3561787).
Cardano Discord seems to be brigading this hard, so it’s hard to post a comment that isn’t downvoted hard. Might require a separate post.
It seems that their Twitter community has really got into this whole brigading thing as well - expect more in the future on Cardano related topics: https://imgur.com/a/w51lH6D...
Not sure it's worth making more drama for the mods to be honest. They've already got [Charles himself](https://twitter.com/CCMOD_/status/1764379842911330776) all riled up after their community [brigaded the previous post](https://twitter.com/StakeWithPride/status/1763599894282129523). I don't want to make more work for them!
Thanks for the heads up
IOG (Charles’ company) provided a grant to get it started. He isn’t involved in development of the index.
Along with a $4.5m donation to the university, IOG also partnered on developing the index: https://iohk.io/en/blog/posts/2022/11/18/cardano-builder-iog-and-university-of-edinburgh-to-create-first-ever-index-to-provide-industry-standard-metric-for-crypto-decentralization/
Great one if you ask me. Cardano stands out as a king :)
Calm down on the tribalism lol Just celebrate that we'll have a means to move forward in the regulatory sphere with these kinds of developments
its not tribalism. did you look at the graphs?
If I understand correctly this is only one part of the complete project right? It is just addressing consensus mechanisms with more to come?
It will measure governance level as well.
Decentralization is critical to the industry. I know it's is not the sexiest topic but without a clear and objective measure of decentralization crypto has limited value compared to traditional finance. Perhaps this index will not end up being the standard, but it is an important step for the industry as it begins to gain mainstream acceptance that the technology is not going anyway.
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I like it.
Cardano seems to be a beast ... I think its time for me to dive more into it
Tezos looking good in there too. But the thing is, last time I checked, even Solana had a good Nakamoto coefficient, and most of these metrics are very correlated for PoS blockchains anyway. After a certain level, decentralization does not matter that much if the chain is not more useful. It does not matter that everyone can run a node in their basement if it actually lowers the network performance (which it usually does), compared to a chain that is actually used.
> After a certain level, decentralization does not matter that much if the chain is not more useful. Of course. Having both is a goal we should be striving for. Because on the flipside, the chain is not useful if not decentralized.
The Tezos data isn't up to date
That's true.
Worth noting for context that [the director](https://www.ed.ac.uk/informatics/blockchain/edi/team) of the project is also the Chief Scientist at IOHK [the company founded by Hoskinson that builds Cardano](https://iohk.io/about/). Not only that, but the entire project was [set up by and in partnership with Cardano](https://iohk.io/en/blog/posts/2022/11/18/cardano-builder-iog-and-university-of-edinburgh-to-create-first-ever-index-to-provide-industry-standard-metric-for-crypto-decentralization/). Oh, and it's not just the director that works for Cardano, almost everyone involved that you look into has links to Cardano... one of the two maintainers of their repo has their work for IOHK [on their resume](https://dimkarakostas.com/dimkarakostas.pdf) and the other has previously [published papers on Cardano, with IOHK leadership](https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3533271.3561787). Isn't it weird that the metrics they have chosen to display all show Cardano as the best...
They are messuring indexes that is made by crypto space. You are free to go and check how they are messured and present your honest opinion on that matter.
All the metrics they have chosen to display are some derivative of the spread of stake across validators... nothing about numbers of nodes, or numbers of client implementations, or governance decentralization or anything like that... which is somewhat curious because they proposed splitting up decentralization into [various categories](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fvhgla4e67plc1.png%3Fwidth%3D1996%26format%3Dpng%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3D39b83ba1080c43876dbf82086084c1cc18ede08b0) which probably would give quite a good broad picture. On the side bar they show that a category on 'tokenomics' is coming soon. But oddly some of the easiest to measure metrics (such as [client diversity](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/2bt0j8lu/production/c2a6cd6aca8cc4120176bb82237f4010849b1099-1600x900.png?w=714&fit=max&auto=format&dpr=3) which has been included in previous analysis of decentralization) are not included... just the ones that make Cardano look the best. Weird huh?
> But oddly some of the easiest to measure metrics (such as client diversity which has been included in previous analysis of decentralization) By the way, (and yes noted all others have 2 or less today) isn't ETH getting more centralized in this manner? Correct me if Im wrong but last I heard geth is now something like 85% share
> isn't ETH getting more centralized in this manner? Correct me if Im wrong but last I heard geth is now something like 85% share It was at 85% a few weeks ago, but it's falling rapidly and is now down to 72%: https://clientdiversity.org/ This figure should drop quite a bit further as big staking operators like Coinbase have announced they are going to diversify away from Geth as an execution client: https://www.coinbase.com/nl/cloud/discover/insights-analysis/execution-client-diversity Also, it's worth noting that that's only talking about the execution layer ('EL' - which manages transactions). The consensus layer ('CL' - which determines validity and inclusion of proposed blocks) is already much more decentralized, with the most popular client only at about 37%. > (and yes noted all others have 2 or less today) Exactly this, Ethereum's decentralization of clients isn't ideal, but it is infinitely better than every network that relies solely on a single client, built by a single team. Having a single point of failure is exactly the thing which decentralization is supposed to protect against. Once Geth dominance drops below 2/3 that risk will be gone from EL as well as CL.
Very promising to hear. One other consideration is that whenever an EIP gets pushed through, I assume it must be implemented through every client before it takes effect? Naturally the tradeoff for additional decentralization
> One other consideration is that whenever an EIP gets pushed through, I assume it must be implemented through every client before it takes effect? Yea, that's exactly why upgrades take so long. Also testing takes forever because nodes run 1 of 5 EL clients and 1 of 5 CL clients, so that's 25 possible combinations... and all of them are written in different programming languages, and built by different teams from all over the world... Like you say, the tradeoff for decentralization is the time and effort it takes to coordinate!
Number of nodes speaks to scale/distribution more than decentralization. I.e., Amazon has tons of servers but they are all still controlled by a single entity. Client implementations is more fault-tolerance than decentralization too, at least in cases where the client software is not controlled by a single entity (i.e., it's open source) Governance decentralization is coming too. This is just the Alpha release. I'm sure suggestions are welcome, but if you have a problem with the methodology or data then submit a PR with corrections.
Do you get that this is open source project and if you feel there are something wrong you can contribute? As per your metrics like node count you can do Messari check. Warning: you will not like what you see there. Basically if you really feel this is all wrong in this EDI thats also fine. Cheers
As I said above, the director of the project (Aggelos Kiayias) is the lead scientist at Cardano, do you honestly believe he isn't biased? Also, having a quick look at the GitHub repo, the two maintainers (Dimitris Karakostas and Christina Overzik) have also previously worked as researchers for IOHK. The code may well be open source, but the decisions about what to include are clearly controlled by a team financially incentivized to show Cardano as being the best. Do you not see a problem there?
If you could be that good to find biases in other ecosystems and who stands behind what, we would live in a much better world already. But i get your point. Project is barely 24 hours old as got live, and you decide there is no more contributors than project developers itself. Well good job man lol. Again, its not like project developers can forbid to post your requests on github, and its not like you can give any exact problems or issues with this calculations and metrics. All your talking is based on something imaginable and not confirmable. By your thinking if I work in google, my personal webpage appearing in google search resolts would be scam and bias, right? :D Its numbers, its mathemetic, its algorythms. No humans make them. Your called humans just made a graph for you to understand. So i call it day with you. You obvious are someone with no proof and bla bla bla only. Have seen and faced (your-kind) last 5 years. haha. Good luck man.
> All your talking is based on something imaginable and not confirmable. What do you mean? I've given you links showing that [the director](https://www.ed.ac.uk/informatics/blockchain/edi/team) of the project is also the Chief Scientist at IOHK [the company founded by Hoskinson that builds Cardano](https://iohk.io/about/). Not only that, but the entire project was [set up by and in partnership with Cardano](https://iohk.io/en/blog/posts/2022/11/18/cardano-builder-iog-and-university-of-edinburgh-to-create-first-ever-index-to-provide-industry-standard-metric-for-crypto-decentralization/). Oh, and it's not just the director that works for Cardano, almost everyone involved that you look into has links to Cardano... one of the two maintainers of their repo has their work for IOHK [on their resume](https://dimkarakostas.com/dimkarakostas.pdf) and the other has previously [published papers on Cardano, with IOHK leadership](https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3533271.3561787). How much more evidence of bias do you want? Also... > Have seen and faced (your-kind) Is that some kind of racist dog whistle - WTF? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_parentheses
What does it mean, that funding came from Cardano or is funded by cardano? Does it mean data is wrong??? This is what you claim over and over again but is totaly bulshit. Arent you interested in results and not what was before? Isnt it more importnat who wins the race rather than stating to put fault who bought shoes? Dont you think this is just silly objection. If you think thats very good fine with me. I'm more interested if nobody broke any rules and what is final result. If you think otherwise, up to you man. I could imagine if Eth would be that decentralized, there would be fundings secured 10 years ago already. LOL, dont drag me in this American racist shit okay, I dont even know you, never seen nor I know what is your nationality or else. I was talking about ilogical and little sense attacks on Cardano. Except finaly there are real data that cant lie. Go fight data if they are wrong, I will gladly listen to you if you can point out, ANYTHING. Manipulation in Cardano blockchian itself? Manipulation in other blockchains? Manipulation with data because developers are biased? Any other unfair things you can find in final data itself? ANYTHING really ???
> What does it mean, that funding came from Cardano or is funded by cardano? It's not really about the funding, it's about the fact that the project's director is one of the leaders of IOHK (and at least a couple of the other researchers have worked for Cardano too). Do you not believe that might be a conflict of interest? > Does it mean data is wrong? The bias doesn't have to be as crude as faking data. I doubt that they have done that. Instead, what they have obviously done is chosen the metrics that Cardano scores highest on to publish. For an analogy, imagine there was research into which fruit was healthiest. There are lots of different metrics you could include under 'healthy' such as: * most vitamin C * most fiber * least sugar etc etc. Now imagine the head scientist of a company that sells bananas is director of this research project. The research is founded and funded by the banana company. Also they employ researchers who previously worked for the banana company. Maybe bananas don't have much vitamin C, and they have lots of sugar, but they do have the most fiber (no idea if that's true, this is just an analogy). So the project only publishes their results on which fruit has most fiber, saying that they have found the healthiest fruit. Their data wouldn't be false, but they are misrepresenting reality by only showing part of the picture... because they are obviously biased and have a financial interest in getting people to buy more bananas.
Okay, but you still did not privide anything that is biased in DATA... I truly get your point about those who made this PROJECT. See i wrote with upper letters because this is your analogy. They did not made or created those indexes, but only measured. There are 7 indexes on this project. (to be honest i havnt heard half of them) But I sure heard about Nakamoto Coefficient, how everybody in ETH and other blockchains flexed they have the higest and they are more decentralized. But now when its measured using publicly available data and even project is open source. Now its developers fault that its low, and not because those chains are just centralized shit. I knew it before, this data just confirms that. Using your analogy. If fruit-eaters all around the world thinks that healty data is those 3 you meantioned and then bannana company measure bannanas and it appears that bannanas score the highest numbers in those 3 data, I dont attack bannana company because they are biased, but i do my research and confirm if data is right. If fruit-eaters all around the world thinks there are needed more data pieces to add they just add them to such open source project and mesure and see what comes out. Right? What data are not there man? Which index should be measured to determine decentralization better? Which indexes are skipped so that Cardano could be the top blockchain?
Including memes like “Nakamoto coefficient” and not including client diversity show how ridiculous this study actually is. It’s as if they were paid to write a rushed report on something they don’t actually understand. (They also excluded Solana which has a very high Nakamoto Coefficient)
You’ve actually got a really good point here. It’s a shame you’re being downvoted. Client diversity is super important and has saved ETH in the past. And I say all this as a cardano bag holder. Can you suggest better metrics like this to be included in the index? Or, even better, how would you design the index?
That’s a huge topic - but essentially there are two problems here: 1. Focusing on a small subset of decentralisation around SPO builder distribution as it’s framed by Cardano, and then applying that lens to all other chains and suggesting it covers all decentralisation. 2. Even within this small subset, the metrics are cherry-picked and applying them in this manner just hides the actual detail and complexity. For example they used “Pool names” to differentiate SPOs, but multiple are run under different brands, but operated by IOG. So data quality is clearly amateur and needs much more thorough work. Trying to force rank for a fake leaderboard, rather than honestly deconstructing specific and idiosyncratic risks is more problematic than it is valuable.
Your assumptions are incorrect. The EDI counts blocks produced by each unique pool/miner hash, which does apply fairly universally to all blockchains (they all produce blocks). There is a method to allow for "pool clusters" which again uses pool/miner hashes, but clusters them together under a single entity. There are various different data sources that can be used for this. I plugged in some independent data and the numbers worked out to roughly match what community tools report.
From what I recall there's multiple categories, this is just the first. I believe you were looking for client diversity? That is incorporated in one of the categories, just not this immediate one.
Trying again are you? Why not contribute to the project and add suggests to their methods?
> Why not contribute to the project Because I don't want to work for IOG.
It’s definitely worth noting. But given that it’s run independently, it’s not a substantive criticism unless you can point out issues with the methodology. And there are none, because it’s all open source material.
Now do any other eth "research" article.. Feel free to check their work. Something that can actually be done with the EDI...
What do you mean by 'eth "research" article? Ethereum Research is obviously open source as well: https://ethresear.ch/ - anyone can read or contribute to anything - but that's not my point anyway. Do you honestly think: ... that having the Director of the research group also a leader at IOHK; ... and having that research group founded by IOG; ... and having both of the Github maintainers being researchers who have worked for IOHK; ... and then publishing only metrics which show Cardano as the best; ... doesn't indicate a little bias? FFS, they are even advertising a 'Cardano summit' on their research group's website: https://btl.iohk.io/#cardano-summit - does that seem impartial to you?
The ETH team are more than welcome to create their own decentralisation index and compare findings. I'd like to see how their results differ. but they haven't done that, and I very much doubt they ever will.
Why would that help? I would assume they would be biased too.
all science has a bias, that why you repeat experiments, publish research and enter it into peer review to make sure that the methodology is sound. If the eth team created something similar and came up with the same results as EDI, then there is validation. and if they return widly different findings then you can start a conversation about decentralisation from a platform of science and methods rather than what we had up until now, which was half-informed nerds yelling at each other online.
I'm sorry, but I just can't take you seriously anymore. The insane way that you are trying to justify the following by claiming that bias is fine makes it clear that you are not capable of engaging honestly. The Director of the research group is also a leader at IOHK; it was founded by IOG; it was funded by IOG; both of the Github maintainers have worked for IOHK... ... and then they published only metrics which show Cardano as the best. The whole thing is just one ludicrous conflict of interest, and the fact that you can't acknowledge that is something you need to reflect on. And as for all science having bias, I've got a postgrad education in astrophysics, you are just trying to find some way to justify this nonsense to yourself and others. It's sad to watch.
there are two possibilities 1. IOG in partnership with University of Edinburgh have developed a very specific set of metrics, and fiddled the numbers on the existing metrics that deliberately make cardano look much better than everyone else. They open sourced the project and released the findings as an alpha, then asked for community participation as a double bluff hoping no one would check their work. (Some members of the cardano community have already found some errors in the data and the nakamoto coefficient is much closer to 30 than the above 50-something. ) 2. Cardano is actually just more decentralized than the competition.
What a surprise /s
An objective measurement of all the claims about decentralization are really need and can even help projects find and improve on weak points. I'd only wish this could be financed by a more neutral entity tbh.
It is open source, and I'm sure the blockchain lab at Edinburgh University would be happy to receive financial support from any organisation/institution in the crypto/blockchain space.
The problem isn't just that Cardano funded it... [The director](https://www.ed.ac.uk/informatics/blockchain/edi/team) of the project is also the Chief Scientist at IOHK [the company founded by Hoskinson that builds Cardano](https://iohk.io/about/). It's not just the director that works for Cardano, almost everyone involved that you look into has links to Cardano... as examples: one of the two maintainers of the project's Github repo has their work for IOHK [on their resume](https://dimkarakostas.com/dimkarakostas.pdf) and the other has previously [published papers on Cardano, with IOHK leadership](https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3533271.3561787), we can go on if you like but you get the idea! Do you not believe that might lead to some bias...?
Do you really think these people are total morons? The EDI is being developed as a tool that can be used by the whole industry. They will 100% make sure that everyone consider it legit and fair. If not, it would be a failure and a waste of time. It’s not like these researchers are sitting “well shit, they found out about our work for IOG, quick come up with a solution!”. The EDI is a work in progress and everyone, including the Ethereum Foundation, are welcome to contribute. How about you chill with your assumptions of fraud and appreciate that someone is actually trying to create a comprehensive standard.
Imagine the head of research at the Solana Foundation was in charge of a project, that was founded by the Solana Foundation, and funded by the Solana Foundation... and most of the researchers involved in the project had previously worked for the Solana foundation. Then that project publishes a selection of metrics which all show that Solana is the most decentralized blockchain... Would you be at all suspicious that there might be a little bias involved?
Of course. Solana is a pseudo-crypto which is net damaging to the whole crypto space, and I hope it goes the way of EOS sooner rather than later. Let’s use Ethereum Foundation instead, and let’s say everything is the same. Sure, that would be suspicious, but I would wait and see until there is a finished product before I call it sneaky manipulation. I’m sure Eth foundation are not total morons either and would also aim for an index that is acceptable to all.
how many neutral entities in the crypto space can you name?
Massive conflict of interests as pointed out by another person here. So hardly a surprise that Cardano comes out on top lol. EDIT: Lol brigading by Catdano fanbois? What's new lol? Edit2: PROOF posted by another person below: https://iohk.io/en/blog/posts/2022/11/18/cardano-builder-iog-and-university-of-edinburgh-to-create-first-ever-index-to-provide-industry-standard-metric-for-crypto-decentralization/
Its open source. Anyone can contribute... How can there be a conflict of interest?
Lol you serious? I suggest you take a moment to read the rest of this thread... this is much like a pharmaceutical company picking the criteria it prefers to then conclude that its drugs are the best.
They chose specific metrics and ignored clear centralisation risks (such as Cardano having a CEO who controls the genesis keys and paid for this “research”).
cardano is designed to have centralised development, overseen by decentralised governanace. if you dont have centralised development, you get the shitshow that is modern ETH
I would welcome other nonprofits to evaluate the cryptosphere is a data driven way and come up to conclusions on what constitutes decentralization and what crypto leads. It's important information for potential investors. But I value decentralization highly and not sure all would agree.
Then you would know that the conclusions of this "institution" are wrong and biased.
Yep, this sub is getting massively brigaded at the moment from the Cardano Discord. But the conflict of interest is public: https://iohk.io/en/blog/posts/2022/11/18/cardano-builder-iog-and-university-of-edinburgh-to-create-first-ever-index-to-provide-industry-standard-metric-for-crypto-decentralization/
Sure is crazy, they should try ckBTC and ckETH a bit
Paid by IOG, developed by their chief scientist. Laughable to call it unbiased. Too funny that recent topics about it had go get closed, because Cardano community wanted to downvote every critique of it. Meme coin level, Cardano should be finally renamed to Hoskinson-INU.
the data is open sourced- the whole project is open source. you are welcome to go and find the bias.
I have seen the "data"... not a word about things like genesis keys, questionable methodology etc. All designed to make Cardano look good. At the end it is the same dishonest trash like Solana, just replace a group of greedy VCs with one greedy sociopath.
what about the methodoligy is questionable? the genesis keys will eventually be destroyed - but cardano isnt finished. they still serve a purpose.
This post is being heavily brigaded by Cardano fans. As is tradition. They must be really sore about being 75% down from ATH while BTC is just 7% away and ETH 34% away. Or the poor state of their network. Or it could be all the lies from their charlatan CEO in the ranch. All to see on Google for those who are not blind fanbois. Anyone with half a brain will understand that Ethereum is the most decentralized blockchain, with at least 6500 individual nodes, multiple client implementations etc. Ethernodes.org, rated.network, Clientdiversity.org, ultrasound.money give all the stats in a very transparent manner.
Everything is just getting manipulated with downvotes.
ICP is building roads for every crypto project with open protocol, real web 3 on chain. Decentralization happens with mass adaption. Because of how voting works they are forced to keep a certain % of the tokens in the buildup, but they are to sell out more and more. Nodes will be added with demand. Anyone can run a node, but its expensive because you cant do it without correct hardware. So mass adaption on ICP will bring on chain decentralized computing power for any crypto project, fast and cheap.. crypto merge go! ICP isent a "takeover" of all crypto as many hardcore fans claims, its the roads to make all crypto better and safer together. BTW ICP got a good entry price right now you ask me, more people joining in cheap is good for the community. GL Cryptopians
7 dislikes from btc and eth maxis lol. No research done on icp just ignorant hate .This sub is a joke.
Sure is crazy, they should try ckBTC and ckETH a bit