Chromia and decentralization - explained by TianLin Shao

TianLin Shao, VP Business Development Asia of ChromaWay, visited Davos, the international meeting point for the most influential people in the globe. The World Economic Forum, as well as parallel conferences destined to discuss distinct matters such as new technologies, took place between the 22nd and the 25th of January. Tianlin participated in several blockchain-related events with eminent players in the field, among them was the BlockBase event in Davos.

Chromia was explained to a broader audience and some details about its platform and its function were provided by Tianlin. The central topic of the discussion was centralization in a decentralized platform, a matter that has been long discussed in the blockchain sphere and, in particular, in the realms of our platform.

The main question of the event was the following:

Can the foundation of blockchain survive scaling to mass adoption despite the unavoidable forms of centralization?

Tianlin responded with the statement below:

“It’s inevitable that, for the decentralized fundamentals of blockchain to scale into mass adoption, bettering our society during this 4th industrial revolution, some forms of centralization will take place. But there are ways for us to maintain its purity and it is our responsibility to lead and ensure its success.”

Take Chromia for example:

1. The initial launch of Chromia MVP will likely not have a sufficient quantity of independent providers. Thus at the initial stage governance will be centralized: all decisions will be made by ChromaWay in consultation with system stakeholders. Transition to proper decentralized governance will happen when the system is ready from a technical perspective and the provider ecosystem is healthy.

2. Chromia has a formal governance system. Our plan is to identify a set of users who actively want to participate in governance. Sybil control can be implemented by keeping track of the social graph. We have no immediate plan to give these users any formal governance power, but they can cast advisory votes.

3. Chromia will not impose any restrictions which aren’t an inherent property of applications running on public blockchains.

4. Chromia will provide tooling which would give users an ability to fork a dapp if they are displeased with its governance or just want to experiment with something different. Our goal is to make sure that this forking can be done in a smooth and civil manner.

For more information on the functioning of Chromia, read the white paper here.