The Cardano Shelley era is about decentralization

Bitcoin is the first successful blockchain. It uses the PoW consensus algorithm that is permissionless but it does not scale well. The scalability issue is often solved by compromising the decentralization. It might not always be the case. Cardano uses PoS consensus that is highly decentralized and scales much better in comparison with PoW.

How to measure the decentralization

It is not easy at all to measure the level of blockchain decentralization and we can often see rather subjective opinions in social media. We will try to describe our view on the topic but bear in mind that somebody else might not fully agree with us.

It is difficult to strive for the highest possible level of decentralization since a network should also be scalable. It is always a compromise between these two properties. Decentralization is generally about the distribution of decision power in the blockchain ecosystem. A set of rules must exist that define who can operate a node that can produce blocks. In a permissioned blockchain, it is needed to get prior approval before a new member can join the network. In a permissionless blockchain, anyone can freely join or leave the network. Notice, that in the permissioned version of the blockchain, the rules must be defined outside of the source code. A fixed number of…