Decentralization and Its Discontents

The essay argues that "decentralization" is treated as a universal good in tech communities but is poorly defined, since it is defined only as "not centralization" and can apply along many separate axes that do not always align. It cites Srinivasan and Lee's Lorenz Curve analysis of cryptocurrency wealth and node hosting, where 69% of Ethereum nodes ran in the hosted cloud in 2022 and 47% in 2023. It also describes how decentralized tech has been used by both sex workers and white supremacists, and how the Daily Stormer received cryptocurrency donations through ENS.