We all know that Monero is the dream coin of privacy-focused users. The usual saying is that if your crypto gives you no privacy that it’s not really worth it.
There have been questions on how decentralized some of the digital currency networks really are. For instance, there are some cryptocurrencies that are known to have central management structure even though they attempt to go through the motion of decentralization using blockchain.
Ripple and Tron for instance have CEOs and are run like any other conventional businesses bringing to the question of decentralization. A user raised the issue on the Monero sub-reddit stating that Monero was what Bitcoin was created to be.
Is Monero Not Decentralized?
According to him:
“In my eyes Monero is what Bitcoin wanted to be when it was created. It is more private and the transactions are faster. But for me a downside is, that there is a central developers team with Monero and I asked myself, if those developers can meddle with the code, after the coin is released to the public? So is Monero not decentralized?”
In their responses, one user made it clear that Monero derives its centralization from its mining algorithm, adding that developers cannot arbitrarily determine the general direction of governance as far as Monero is concerned since they do not control the network.
Mine with Regular Hardware
Brugel Nauszmazcer who wrote the response stated that he doubted that the Bitcoin network is more decentralized than Monero. He stated that some coins may have issues with true decentralization giving examples with EOS, Ethereum, Ripple and Stellar, citing that the fact that they cannot be mined with consumer grade equipment should be a decentralization concern.
This is where Monero is unique in that the codes were meant to be anti centralization because it effectively makes it impossible to mine XMR with industry grade miners such as ASICs. He gave his views adding that Bitcoin, Monero, Grin and Doge are examples of truly decentralized coins.
A Core developer Team
It is common knowledge that Monero has a centralized developer team some of whom are known. Another user with the moniker of WhyVitamins stated that every project has a core team that may be centralized, but this would accept assistance in the development of the code base from contributors from around the world.
In his input, he stated that
“I suppose that there’s a central team of developers with every project, especially of such magnitude. It’s just impossible for random people to create sophisticated software on such a scale. Plus, Bitcoin does actually have a central development team/or a single person.”
He maintained that Monero epitomizes decentralization because people around the world run nodes to secure the network just as individuals who are not related or known to one another contribute to building the codes.
Fobos gave another insight on how the development of the Monero project was done. He was of the opinion that Monero, just like most great projects, was initiated by one individual who built what could be referred to as the framework of the code base.
However, for a new contributor to add to the code base, they had to prove to the community that they had an input regarding what needed to be done and the competence to do so.
“If you already contributed something and you convince the community what should be done and you can do it you can even get paid for it. But most development is made by one guy.”
Watchful Eyes
He further stated that having 10 developers who are full-time involved in the improvement of the project makes every project decentralized. What is very clear in the discussion is that there are watchful eyes attentive to every new code added to the network. These are meant to make sure that nothing goes wrong.
Fluffy_Doggy summarized it this way:
“We’re always watching what moneromoo is merging to the code. If he merges something that is controversial, we can always fork.”
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