[Din] Re: next steps for DINRG

[Thomas Hardjono <[e-mail]>]

Thanks William,

I think you provided a very good summary of the complexity of the problem.

The question for DIN RG (from my perspective) is: what part of the complexity can DIN provide possible solutions for?


Best

--thomas



From: William Lehr <[e-mail]>
Date: Monday, October 21, 2024 at 4:34 PM
To: Lixia Zhang <[e-mail]>, Thomas Hardjono <[e-mail]>
Cc: Chad Kohalyk <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] <[e-mail]>, Volker Stocker <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: [Din] Re: next steps for DINRG

RE: "Yes I’m aware of economic papers/analysis stating that efficiency and cost-savings favors centralization.  In contrast, I’m referring to future so-called Web3 systems that bake-in decentralization patterns to avoid these concentrations of power."

There are certainly economic models that argue that efficiency and cost-savings favor centralization, but that is definitely NOT a consensus conclusion since it very much depends on the context. In a dynamic environment  centralization may very well be less efficient and more costly. The economic arguments for productive efficiency (cost-savings) often rely on scale economies that are assumed to depend on centralized organization of production. The technical and economic implications of more or less decentralization depend on the context and dimension of performance you are considering. Control (decision-making power), ownership, and Parties bearing costs/benefits may all vary in different degrees with respect to the extent of centralization or decentralization.
On 10/21/24 9:54 AM, Lixia Zhang wrote:
Hi Thomas,

thanks for your great set of questions.
Just a personal comment: most of your questions seem to me related to one basic question one way or another: what is exactly the definition of "Internet decentralization" that we are aiming at?

I think clarifying this definition would directly answer the questions about VMs vs bare-metal, machine locations etc. This would also indirectly touch on some other questions (e.g. do so-called Web3 systems have bake-in decentralization).

I also appreciate your suggestion of identifying potential relations between DINRG and some WGs work.

Lixia


On Oct 18, 2024, at 12:30 PM, Thomas Hardjono <[e-mail]><mailto:[e-mail]> wrote:

Just some quick thoughts on the “What’s next” question.

One of the things DINRG could focus on is the standards (architectures, protocols, etc.) and tools to measure the degree of decentralization of systems and networks (notably those DLT-based offerings that claim to be “decentralized”).

Let’s say a DLT network (e.g. blockchain) has 100 nodes and the network claims to be operating in decentralized manner.   What if it turns out that 90% of those nodes are actually VMs running in the cloud, and what if it turns out that 90% of those cloud-based VMs are running on the same Cloud Provider? (worse, what if they’re running on the same  Zones, like US-West and US-East).  Would you accept their claim of decentralization seriously?

Some possible future work for DINRG:

-- Could DIN look at protocols that report on which nodes are running on bare-metal, versus physically separated VMs, versus VMs clustered in a given zone.

-- Could Device-ID and device-stack identifiers be useful (building on protocols defined in the RATS WG and TEEP WG).

-- Could DIN leverage the work already being done in the IEF WGs (e.g. RATS, SCITT, etc), and also from other industry bodies (e.g. TCG DICE; OpenCompute; Confidential Computing Consortium; etc).

-- Could DIN be the funnel/filter into which near-mature proposal can be fed into working groups in the IETF. An example of this was the Group Security RG (GSEC) that funneled some ready items into the MSEC WG.

https://www.irtf.org/concluded/gsec.html
https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/msec/about/

PS.  Yes I’m aware of economic papers/analysis stating that efficiency and cost-savings favors centralization.  In contrast, I’m referring to future so-called Web3 systems that bake-in decentralization patterns to avoid these concentrations of power.


Best

--thomas

From: Chad Kohalyk <[e-mail]<mailto:[e-mail]>>
Date: Friday, October 18, 2024 at 12:41 PM
To: [e-mail]<mailto:[e-mail]> <[e-mail]<mailto:[e-mail]>>
Subject: [Din] Re: next steps for DINRG
Thanks Dirk.

One possibility is to discuss “What now?”

I think that was one of the conclusions of the IETF120 discussion: who should DINRG collaborate with in order to effect change?

In other words, what is DINRG’s theory of change? Where does the research go once it is complete? Is DINRG’s role purely observatory? On who’s behalf? (merely the IRTF?)

Possibly these were answered when DINRG was stood up, but based on the conversation in Vancouver it didn’t seem like the community understood what’s next.

So I submit this as a topic suggestion.

Thank you,

Chad Kohalyk

On Fri, Oct 18, 2024, at 1:41 AM, Dirk Kutscher wrote:

Dear all,

in Dublin, we are planning to continue our discussion on next steps for DINRG.

To that end, we are soliciting suggestions, interests indications, and questions here. If you have a suggestion, please feel free to share it here or by personal e-mail.

We will collect everything and then prepare a summary before the meeting.

As a bit of background:

As chartered, DINRG has different objectives:

  *   Investigation of the root causes of Internet centralization, and articulation of the impacts of the market economy, architecture and protocol designs, as well as government regulations;
  *   Measurement of the Internet centralization and the consequential societal impacts;
  *   Characterization and assessment of observed Internet centralization;
  *   Development of a common terminology and understanding of (de-)centralization;
  *   Interaction with the broader research community to explore new research topics and technical solutions for decentralized system and application development;
  *   Documentation of the outcome from the above efforts via different means (e.g., research papers and RFCs) as inputs to the broader conversation around centralization; and
  *   Facilitation of discussions between researchers, organizations and individuals involved in Internet standards and regulations.

Let us know, which of these objectives should be emphasized in your view, and whether you have specific interests within these topics that should be discussed more.
Best regards,
Dirk and Lixia
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