Mastering Blockchain - Second Edition

Computing power and decentralization

Decentralization of computing or processing power is achieved by a blockchain technology such as Ethereum, where smart contracts with embedded business logic can run on the blockchain network. Other blockchain technologies also provide similar processing-layer platforms, where business logic can run over the network in a decentralized manner.

The following diagram shows a decentralized ecosystem overview. At the bottom layer, the internet or Meshnets provide a decentralized communication layer. On the next layer up, a storage layer uses technologies such as IPFS and BigchainDB to enable decentralization. Finally, at the next level up, you can see that blockchain serves as a decentralized processing (computation) ...