Dfinity, the team behind the Internet Computer Protocol (ICP), responded to criticisms of the decentralization and privacy of its protocol at an AMA (“Ask Me Anything”) event on Reddit yesterday.
The team tried to reassure people that the project’s foundation does not control the majority of voting rights and emphasized that decentralization is a priority for the network to move forward.
The project aims to replace the public Internet with a distributed network composed of data centers, nodes, subnets, and users coordinated through the Network Neural System (NNS). NNS decides which nodes can join Dfinity’s network, restricts misbehaving nodes, and facilitates communication between ICP components and participants.
However, NNS has always been criticized. Users have expressed concerns about the centralization of voting rights, the closed process and the patented code supporting the agreement, the lack of transparency in data collection, and the single point of failure caused by the NNS design.
Some people expressed concern about the gradual increase in NNS voting rights, worrying that the system will allow the Dfinity Foundation and its early supporters to continue to centralize control of the network in the future.
Concerning the lack of decentralization of the project, Dfinity researcher Jens Camenisch responded: “The ultimate goal is to achieve complete decentralization of Internet Computer, not to be controlled by Dfinity or anyone.”
Dfinity Product Director Diego Prats added: “The foundation does not control the majority of voting rights in NNS.”
“‘The greater the power, the greater the responsibility’, the community needs to take on this responsibility. I personally think that the community will assume this role, but it is too early, and we are facing many challenges.”
In response to users’ concerns about being forced to use a single network identity, Diego said:
“Internet identity is not to authenticate applications or canisters on ICs (as smart contracts on Dfinity, deployed in IC data centers, and designed for large-scale network services, scalable and interoperable computing units). The only way. We provide it as a service to application developers, so that they can use open standards-based identity authentication, and developers can use or launch any product they want or don’t have at all. This is for IC’s Use is completely optional.”
Jens pointed out that connecting directly to the Internet Computer will allow the node to identify the user’s IP address and view the data it is trying to send, while using the Onion Router (TOR) to connect to the IC will enable “TOR-level anonymity on the IC.”
Jens later clarified that he could not access IC while using TOR, unless using TOR through a private window of the Brave browser.
Critics also estimate that as many as 74% of the supply of ICP tokens may be concentrated in “private interests”, including project teams, investors, and advisors. Nick from the Dfinity Foundation refuted this claim, claiming that only 24.72% of the token supply was held by seed donors.
On May 28, Dfinity founder Dominic Williams published a blog post outlining the roadmap for the project to integrate Ethereum, pointing out that the intention of the project is to co-exist with Ethereum, rather than directly compete with Ethereum.
Author/ Translator: Jamie Kim
Bio: Jamie Kim is a technology journalist. Raised in Hong Kong and always vocal at heart. She aims to share her expertise with the readers at blockreview.net. Kim is a Bitcoin maximalist who believes with unwavering conviction that Bitcoin is the only cryptocurrency – in fact, currency – worth caring about.