Geographic decentralisation is a prerequisite for the censorship resistance and neutrality that Ethereum, Bitcoin and similar systems aim to provide. While we have some basic metrics like validators-per-region, little work has been done to understand how protocols can be designed to facilitate, or at least preserve, geographic decentralisation over time.
Join us in an effort to tease apart the definitions, problem statements and approaches that can move this research forward.
This will be an intimate, highly-interactive salon bringing together a few streams of early, ongoing work. The aim is to accelerate these projects and spawn new ones.
Agenda:
16:00-16:05: Introduction - @Quintus
Ethereum: Case Study
16:05-16:20: Geo Decentralization & Ethereum: A Data Perspective - @dataalways
What is the geographic state of Ethereum today? This talk gives insight into timing games in PBS, block propagation delays and other relevant aspects of Ethereum.
16:20-16:35: Simulating Centralization - @boz1 & @syang
Data can only take us so far. Simulations provide a means of studying potential protocol changes. This presentation covers ongoing work on a geographic simulation model of Ethereum.
Colocation Incentives
16:35-16:50: Defining Geographic (De)Centralization - @phil
We have some ideas for measuring the geographic centralization of a protocol today, but can we distinguish between protocols based on their tendency to (de)centralize over time? We can explore this question by contrasting example protocols.
16:50-17:05: Geographically Distributed Auctions - Mallesh Pai
This work-in-progress models how agents locate themselves when they are participating in an auction in which information originates from different points in space. On-chain arbitrage provides a clear example of the relevance to existing blockchains.
17:15-17:20: The Geographic Impact of Multiple Concurrent Leaders - Pranav Garimidi
Can multiple-concurrent-leader consensus designs influence the tendency of a network to colocate over time? What is the impact of rewarding proposers for their unique inclusions?
Measuring Location
17:20-17:35: BFT Proof of Location Ranvir Rana
Previous talks studied how we can incentivise agents to locate themselves in diverse geographies, but what if we can tell their geographies through other means? This talk explores how we can triangulate positions in a network with adversarial assumptions.
17:35-17:45: Proof-of-Location: On-Earth and Orbital Roots of Trust - @rezabfil
Today’s cloud TEE’s are not robust against physical attackers. How can we prove that they are in trusted locations like data centres or… outer space? Once we have TEEs in space, can we use this to ascertain network geographies on Earth?
17:45-17:50: Cost of Kidnapping: Graduating From The Nakamoto Coefficient - Lu Zhang
The Nakamoto coefficient provides one perspective of decentralisation. What are its limits and how can we improve on it? Cost of Kidnapping is one answer to this questions
Discussion
18:00: Dinner & Breakouts
19:30: Presentations from breakout groups
Unstructured discussion…
Background Reading
- Decentralized crypto needs you: to be a geographical decentralization maxi
- Geographic Decentralisation Research Directions
- BFT-PoLoc
- ETH++: A roadmap to (real) decentralization
- Narrowing the Gap between TEEs Threat Model and Deployment Strategies
- Space computer
EDIT:
You may also be interested in this panel on geographic decentralisation that happened at MEV-SBC a few days later.