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Is a greener, faster and more decentralised alternative to Bitcoin possible?
比特币可能有更环保、更快以及更加去中心化的替代品吗?
Crypto is the key to paradise, particularly the financial kind. That, at least, is what the fans argue. Greedy intermediaries, such as banks, will be replaced by smart contracts (self-executing rules) that run on blockchains (distributed databases). This will give rise to efficient and innovative financial services, collectively called “decentralised finance” (DeFi). The foundations of this edifice are shaky, however. Today’s blockchains may be masterworks of coding, but they are also fiendishly complex, energy-hungry and, perhaps counterintuitively, centralised.
加密货币是通往天堂的钥匙，尤其是金融领域。至少，粉丝们是这么认为的。银行等贪婪的中介机构将被运行在区块链（分布式数据库）上的智能合约（自动执行规则）所取代。这将产生高效和创新的金融服务，统称为“去中心化金融”(DeFi)。然而，这座大厦的基础并不牢固。今天的区块链可能是编码的杰作，但它们也极其复杂、耗能，而且（或许与直觉相反）集中化。
Despite years of work, crypto developers are still trying to fully overcome the trade-offs inherent in the technology. You can think of banks as maintaining big, opaque databases that contain information on customers’ accounts and the money in them. Depositors have to trust that these institutions act in their interests. Sometimes, however, banks may not do so: they might make bad investments and collapse; or they might freeze depositors’ accounts at a government’s behest.
尽管进行了多年的工作，加密货币开发人员仍在试图完全克服该技术固有的权衡。你可以把银行想象成维护庞大且不透明数据的数据库，其中包含客户账户和资金的信息。存款人必须相信，这些机构的行为符合他们的利益。然而，有时银行可能不会这样做：它们可能会做出错误的投资并破产；或者，他们可能会在政府的命令下冻结储户的账户。
To their proponents, blockchains provide the basis for a type of finance that avoids such problems. Account databases would be maintained not by a central authority, but by the computers of those who use them. An account could be frozen only if a certain majority of those maintaining the blockchain agrees to do so.
对其支持者来说，区块链为一种避免此类问题的金融类型提供了基础。帐户数据库将由使用者的计算机而不是由中央当局来维护。一个账户只有在维持区块链的特定多数人同意的情况下才能被冻结。
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