As stated at the very bottom of the relay node config docs page. The Algorand team manages relay nodes registered in Cloudflare DNS provider at their discretion. IMHO that fact gives much power to the Algorand team and I would question decentralisation. Do you have ideas on how this problem could be solved?
Email the DNS Name and Port for your relay (e.g. r1.algorand.network:4161) to testnet-team@algorand.com. We will evaluate your request and add your relay to the official list at our discretion. >
You raise an important point about the Algorand blockchain. The Cloudflare DNS defines the default list of relays an Algorand node can connect to. However, it is possible to change the configuration of the node to use a different list of relays (see the property DNSBootstrapID in https://developer.algorand.org/docs/node-configuration-settings). Anybody can in theory propose a different list of relays.
In addition, anybody with any number of Algos can run a participation node to participate in the Algorand consensus protocol. An important security property of the Algorand blockchain is that even if all the relays are malicious, as long as sufficiently many participants (in terms of stake) are honest, the blockchain cannot fork.
Hi,
Thanks for your explaination. It makes sense now. Is there a way to retrieve DNSBootstrapID value of all relay nodes so we qualify decentralisation?
I don’t think there is any way to retrieve DNSBootstapID from a node you do not control.
I don’t know of another list of relays apart from the default one, as of today.
To the context of all great answers here, shall I add that CloudFlare is actually an Edge hosting and networking service which simply put is as decentralized as a single service provider can get over internet. Aside from amazing features in Algorand core algorithms to defeat centralized custody or power weighting of any kind , I think the CloudFlare and Algorand are made for each other and I am personally working on making that marriage happen on service level too!