My tweet about decentralization actually spurred a lot of debate (and I was called an idiot too many times to count) So, does decentralization matter? What does it mean to have a truly decentralized application, protocol, blockchain, or system? And why aren’t more crypto applications actually decentralized, versus virtue-signaling their “decentralization” that doesn’t actually exist? True mass decentralized has not yet been achieved broadly speaking (a few outliers), and I don’t think it will be achieved for some time. Examples like Ethereum, Cardano, and Uniswap have been used— but it could be argued that there is some level of centralization in all of these. For now, most participants don’t actually care about using centralized platforms, chains, etc. This is why CEXs have disproportionately high numbers of users. The average Joe just wants to passively make money, regardless of who has their keys. The underlying tech stack of MANY crypto applications is not at all decentralized, and has a single point of failure. Just today, a “decentralized” and “permissionless” platform manually refunded their in-app currency to users that fell for a fake listing. Is this still honoring the decentralization given the points were off-chain? Or is any intermediary meddling showcasing centralization? I’m glad this debate is happening, with myself unfortunately being the brunt of many jokes, but the overall acknowledgement that “hey… maybe things aren’t as decentralized as they appear to be” is important. There’s a world where we do achieve mass adoption of decentralized protocols and get rid of the centralization that has plagued our industry, but it won’t happen overnight. We should champion and support truly decentralized and permissionless apps, protocols, chains, and systems, versus ones that remain centralized with no path to decentralization.