Everyone doesn't have to trust the same nodes, the network will actually come to consensus with minimal overlap of trusted validators in the UNLs (and more importantly it will detect and halt when the network isn't coming to consensus, instead of forking like the bitcoin blockchain).
Besides, the definition of centralization is that there's a central authority with arbitrary power, such as changing balances or freezing accounts.
Does that mean it does an intersect of sets of trusted validators? How does it determine which sets of trusted validators to use? What if the intersection is the empty set?
What do you mean by "it"? There is only a p2p network, with each node acting independently. Nodes which are on multiple other nodes UNLs could be considered the intersection of a set. But it makes more sense to think of it as a directed graph. There's no such think as an "untrusted validator", if you run rippled and your node isn't on anyone else's UNL, then you aren't really part of the network because your votes aren't considered in anyone else's consensus decisions (but you would get real-time access to the proposals and candidate sets).
So the set of of validators which gets used is exactly the union of nodes in the UNLs. If you have two networks without any overlap in the UNLs, then you'd get two separate ledgers.
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Everyone doesn't have to trust the same nodes, the network will actually come to consensus with minimal overlap of trusted validators in the UNLs (and more importantly it will detect and halt when the network isn't coming to consensus, instead of forking like the bitcoin blockchain).
Besides, the definition of centralization is that there's a central authority with arbitrary power, such as changing balances or freezing accounts.
Does that mean it does an intersect of sets of trusted validators? How does it determine which sets of trusted validators to use? What if the intersection is the empty set?
What do you mean by "it"? There is only a p2p network, with each node acting independently. Nodes which are on multiple other nodes UNLs could be considered the intersection of a set. But it makes more sense to think of it as a directed graph. There's no such think as an "untrusted validator", if you run rippled and your node isn't on anyone else's UNL, then you aren't really part of the network because your votes aren't considered in anyone else's consensus decisions (but you would get real-time access to the proposals and candidate sets).
So the set of of validators which gets used is exactly the union of nodes in the UNLs. If you have two networks without any overlap in the UNLs, then you'd get two separate ledgers.
http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/13330/what-is-the...
http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/10227/why-does-ri...