-
Notifications
You must be signed in to change notification settings - Fork 0
Permissionless vs Accessible
I think in the lens of blockchain, people mean the underlying USE of the network does not have any individual/group ALLOWING you to signup/join/participate. For example, in Bitcoin, anyone can generate a transaction and the network will process it (assuming you own some bitcoins and can spend them). Bitcoin has the ability to lock coins for periods, not allowing you to spend them, and this is still permissionless because the Bitcoin protocol is doing exactly what it said it would. Think of the protocol as a 'terms of service'. You can make a protocol that requires permission to use it, but that is, by definition, not permissionless. Sometimes these are called permissioned blockchains or federated blockchains. These were in vogue in 2017-2019. I think most of these projects disappeared since they are basically a public read, permissioned write database.
Before Bitcoin had an exchange rate, anyone with a computer (CPU) and an internet connection could ACQUIRE bitcoins. Bitcoin mining acts as a permissionless decentralized exchange (DEX). You put in currency in which you paid for hardware/electricity and you got in return, bitcoins. Sometimes people equate permissionless as accessible. I think they are similar, but different. For example. Bitcoin mining today is, per the protocol, still permissionless. You provide a hash that meets the difficulty, you win the block. However it is not ACCESSIBLE to most (Millions of USD to be competitive, a 'normal' person couldn't do it). Now if all the world would ban exchanging their native fiat currency in to bitcoin (by way of strong arming exchanges) then would bitcoin no longer be permissionless BECAUSE mining is not accessible? If there is no way to acquire the token it may still be permissionless, but useless. It would lose any exchange rate in this scenario (except whatever demand black markets could provide) and Bitcoin mining difficulty would drop back to where individual miners could use mining as a DEX again.