New research work led by top MIT researchers suggests that decentralization is not just a design choice, but a principle of efficiency in which control collapses as systems expand.
In the crypto industry, decentralization is roughly defined as the distribution of electricity and control across multiple independent participants rather than a single central authority.
This means that a single entity, such as a business or government, cannot decide how the system works, changes rules, or stops trading on its own.
“The first control rule is observability. You can't control what you don't observe. Observability is not on scale,” says Muriel Médard, co-founder and CEO of a distributed memory infrastructure company. Decryption An interview at Token2049 in Singapore.
The question is not whether you agree to decentralization or like it anymore, but the details of “centralization doesn't work when the system is big enough.”
These ideas were first explored at Medad's recent MIT study Wireless transmitters show how to distribute functions instead of centralizing them, which can make communication systems much more energy efficient.
However, Medard's claim that decentralization works more efficiently by default is not about what nature teeth And more how It works.
The Nature Statement “is already deducted from the fundamental lack of natural frames such as equations, n-1,” said Virgilio Rivas, professor of philosophy at the University of Polytechnic in the Philippines. Decryption.
Rivas explains that the system organizes itself by removing a single center or fixed frame. Simply put, nature works through connections and differences, and “actual defaults” and “behaves as observable.”
Still, the Médard team at Optimum is now applying the same principles to blockchain networks, turning research into code on distributed efficiency.
The new network layer, tested on Ethereum's Hoodi TestNet, expands blocks in about 150 ms at 6.5 times faster than Gossipsub, and the system Ethereum uses it to share data between validators.
dubbing Mump2pOptimum's system is based on mathematical principles first developed in US military-funded research on reliable communications networks for more than decades.
“What we're building is the memory layer,” she explained, “it works like a computer's operating system.” Memory helps the system move data. That's where most inefficiencies in blockchain arise, Medard argues.
According to Optimum, its testnet shows that blockchains like Ethereum and Solana run more efficiently due to faster data sharing, and faster transactions and lower fees could affect the way users trade and interact with chains.
But while lower delays could help “shrink the price range,” the big profits like Optimum shows won't “eliminate” existing bottlenecks anytime soon, said Kanny Lee, founder and CEO of Decentralized Exchange Protocol SecondSwap.
“Even though it's six times better than Ethereum, blockchain still runs much slower than traditional finance,” Lee said. Decryption. However, what this does is a “more efficient on-chain environment” and arbitrage “is becoming more difficult and the market responds faster to information,” he added.
Given these benefits, a blockchain system “may behave like an integrated trading network, not like a relay,” Lee said.
He says as infrastructure improves, Edge will shift from speed to access, as seen in the market for locked tokens, changing the allocation of rights for allocation, and the structured distribution of “trading timing and access rather than delay.”
