Are blockchains decentralized?
I think this misses the elephant in the room: the tech may have flaws, but there&#x27;s far worse flaws.<p>Who is it that actually has control and influence in crypto?<p>1. The developers.
2. The miners.
3. Everyone else (very distant from the rest)<p>The developers aren&#x27;t decentralized at all, they typically are a single, small team with some sort of leader. They can make a lot of decisions almost unilaterally.<p>Then very close below are the miners. The miners have serious economic concerns, so they can do things like refusing to run the software the developers provide. So we can expect devs and miners to be in close contact in most cryptocurrencies.<p>And very far below that is everyone else. You can run your &quot;full node&quot;, but most nobody cares. Miners decide what goes or doesn&#x27;t on the network.<p>And that&#x27;s why Bitcoin is the way it is. Back when fees rose to $50&#x2F;transaction because the capacity was overwhelmed...<p>Did the devs have a problem? No, because they had ideas how to sell add-on products to deal with that issue, and such products are much easier to sell when there&#x27;s a problem that needs fixing.<p>Did the miners have a problem? No, because the network was still heavily used and they were reaping all those juicy fees coming their way.<p>Did the users have a problem? Yes, their experience sucked badly. But for both parties actually in control solving those problems would require losing money.<p>And thus crypto ends up being controlled by a small cabal of elites, while the normal users get screwed.