Top Blockchains That Are More Decentralised Than Others

Let us take the US dollar and Bitcoin as examples to understand the concept of decentralization.

The United States government has complete control over the US dollar and can create new notes whenever they want to. They can also determine how the banks distribute them and even monitor and restrict the use of the currency around the world. Therefore, the US dollar is a centralized currency.

Whereas in the Bitcoin network, no individual or organization can willingly create new Bitcoin tokens or decide how they are distributed or monitored. The Bitcoin consensus mechanism, which involves various entities or nodes, controls the creation and distribution of new bitcoins.

But true decentralization is theoretical at this point. There will always be a level of certain centralization pertaining to scalability or security.

However, as the mining difficulty increased thanks to an influx of new miners, high-end computers were needed to mine new blocks. Only a select few had the pocket size to purchase such systems and handle their extremely high operating costs. As such, the mining market was captured by certain mining groups. These few large mining pools have a bigger influence on the network than regular users.

Many blockchains ran into similar problems. However, a handful of blockchains have maintained high levels of decentralization thanks to innovative technologies and mining methods. We have listed a few of them below:

Tezos (XTZ)

In this model, anyone can become a validator, also known as a ‘Baker’ on the Tezos network. However, to become a baker, you need to stake a minimum of 10,000 XTZ, which is the native currency of the Tezos network.

Any baker can suggest blockchain modification, addition, or upgrades. If the proposed change achieves 80 percent agreement (known as supermajority), it’s automatically implemented on a Tezos testnet for 48 hours. If things work without any glitches, the changes are implemented on the Tezos mainnet, and will be subject to a further vote.

Users who do not want to become bakers themselves but want to participate in the governance of the blockchain can delegate their stake to a baker of their choice. The best part is that delegators do not have to relinquish custody of their XTZ to participate in the delegation.

This system helps the community avoid any major disputes or the emergence of factions that could hinder the network’s development. It also minimizes the dilution of the small token holders and ensures that everyone has a say in the governance of the blockchain.

IOTA (MIOTA)

IOTA is less of a blockchain and more of a system of nodes that confirm transactions. This system of nodes is part of a proprietary technology known as Tangle. The technology mimics the blockchain’s ability to execute transactions securely but blocks and miners.

Instead, every new transaction is validated by approving the previous two transactions from another node. This innovative approach ensures that the network’s size and speed will be directly related to how many people are using the platform at a given time. This makes it infinity scalable and extremely decentralized.

QuarkChain network (QKC)

QuarkChain network is a permissionless blockchain architecture that uses blockchain sharding technology to implement scalability and true decentralization. The network also delivers 100,000 transactions per second (TPS) on-chain.

Sharding allows for the various functions of a block in a blockchain to be done in multiple smaller blockchains within the main blockchain. These smaller blockchains are called shards. The network achieves decentralization through collaborative mining. Miners can choose to mine in shards or the root chain and do so directly without joining mining pools.

Elastos

Elastos describes itself as the ‘internet of the future. It was created to be a decentralized, blockchain-powered version of the internet.

Elastos uses sidechains to achieve complete decentralization. The side chains offload processing from the main blockchain. These sidechains perform computation, data management, and integration with the main blockchain for critical transactions and authentication.