systems are not a new concept and have been running in production

for decades. Please note that a distributed system can also be

centralized as the ownership of the ecosystem can still be in the

hands of one party.

1.5.4.3 Decentralized System

Decentralization, on the other hand, is associated with control. In a

decentralized ecosystem, the decisive power is divided among many

or, let’s just say, that the ecosystem is together owned by many.

When it comes to location, the decentralized ecosystem can have

one or many different locations of the data and their respective

ownership.

Table 1.1 is a comparative chart on the advantages and

disadvantages of the three ecosystems, as follows:

Type of

Ecosystem

Advantages

Disadvantages

Centralized

Dedicated resources, hence

less expensive

Simple

to

architect,

configure,

develop,

test,

debug, and maintain

Peace

of

mind

with

centralized consensus

Single point of failure and

mass hacking possible

Monopoly possible resulting

in higher fees for transaction

Performance and scalability

always a bottleneck, and

hence

inappropriate

for

bigger

ecosystems

with

higher complexity

Distributed

Can

be

highly

scalable

horizontally

Fault tolerant

Low latency

More complex to architect,

configure,

develop,

test,

debug, and maintain

Synchronization

and

consistency are always a

challenge

Network availability can face

a challenge

Decentralized

Scales

moderately

and

More complex to architect,