I’ve talked about this a lot with @dcwalk_. My sense is that “decentralization” is often so vapid a term that it’s necessary to investigate exactly what is being decentralized and how, and what’s being missed.

@ntnsndr recently published a great article about this. He points out that many decentralized systems lead to centralized outcomes (Bitcoin mining power is a good example) and argues “The rhetoric of decentralization thus obscures other aspects of the re-ordering it claims to describe. It steers attention from where concentrations of power are operating, deferring worthwhile debate about how such power should operate.”

In other words, beyond not meaning anything in particular, “decentralization” can be deceiving. If we think strongly enough of a technical system to believe it can change the world, we owe it to ourselves to be specific about how this change might occur.

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tl;dr: agreed!