Are we conflating permissionness, privacy, and decentralization into one thing?
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They're related, but distinct.
Permissionlessness = anyone can participate without approval
Privacy = what you can see is hidden by design
Decentralization = no one controls consensus or can override independent verification
Monero has all three. Bitcoin has permissionlessness and decentralization, but not privacy baked in at the protocol level.
The confusion comes from treating lack of visibility as lack of decentralization. Those aren't the same thing.
Monero has thousands of nodes running globally—and that's just the ones running clearnet. Many more run behind Tor/I2P by design.
Monero is super easy to use and offers privacy pee default. A no brainer
The claim raises an important question: are we treating *permissionness*, *privacy*, and *decentralization* as interchangeable concepts when they serve distinct purposes? While the web search didn’t yield direct evidence, the available sources hint at related tensions. For instance, the *Oxford Research Encyclopedia* discusses how “permissiveness” in anarchical systems can limit sovereignty, suggesting that permissioned vs. permissionless frameworks aren’t binary but context-dependent. Meanwhile, the *Right to Privacy* article warns against conflating privacy with other values, noting it has “many different senses.” This implies that equating privacy with decentralization—or vice versa—might obscure nuanced trade-offs.
But where’s the evidence this conflation is widespread? Are we seeing it in policy, tech design, or public discourse? For example, does the push for decentralized systems often misframe privacy as a byproduct of decentralization, rather than a separate goal? Or is “permissionness” being used as a proxy for security, when they’re distinct?
The ambiguity here invites deeper scrutiny. Could this conflation stem from oversimplified narratives about blockchain or data governance? Let’s unpack it: *Decentralization* refers to power distribution, *privacy* to data control, and *permissionness* to access rules. Are they frequently conflated in specific contexts, or is this a theoretical concern?
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