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There's only one development team behind the protocol and only one client implementation (afaik), which means that pressuring only two or three people is enough to guarantee that a backdoor is implemented or some form of transaction censorship happens.

edit: implementation / implemented




That's moving the goalpost pretty far. In this context the discussion is whether the protocol is decentralized. Whether the development is or isn't decentralized is also potentially an issue but it's a completely different discussion. Even if bitcoin had only one development team and only one implementation the protocol would still be decentralized.


I understand your comment but to me and others working on web3 projects, decentralisation is always measured in 3 categories, political, architectural and logical so from my perspective this isn't shifting goalposts, it's being accurate.

I think I've already shared Vitalik Buterin's article elsewhere but in any case, https://medium.com/@VitalikButerin/the-meaning-of-decentrali...

I saw a twitter thread today that covered the arguments against EOS (as an example) by judging them exactly on how their architecture, logical and political systems doesn't fulfil the requirements to be considered "decentralised" that might be interesting. Here: https://twitter.com/jamesspediacci/status/104981160787686195...




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