Thanks for the replies! And when I asked what “decentralized” mean, I was referring to the crypto world and what the community opinion is on this topic, not what google finds and the way the dictionary defines it. But I’m getting what decentralized would mean. And to avoid any confusion, I’m interested in this project because they seem to have been working as a non-profit for the past two years (not a quick buck project.) However, I don’t and probably never like the idea of someone having the absolute power over my account. Banks have that, that’s why we’re here—BitcoinTalk.org.

Somebody was wondering why I was giving this project as an example. Of course I will! Look at France.com’s recent case. So if you own France.eth does that mean you might have to handle it to them just because they feel like it? And you can find hand full of such names, which could lead to more cases like this—wait for someone to buy it, work to make it popular, and when the name becomes valuable they’ll use the rotten court system to hand the name over to them. Thanks but no thanks! This case was just an example, it could also happen with other businesses.

It’s on their webpage: https:ens.domains it was also in the documentation of ens.domains but the page is down rn. There was also post on Medium, but I can’t find which one it was.

I’ll try to find the Medium article, and if I do, I’ll update my reply. But it can be seen on their website.

When someone says “decentralized”, I’m thinking about Bitcoin. Is not run or controlled by anyone, and the only way to lose your coins is if you either transfer them or someone gets your seed. And the reason I’m asking is a recent article about a bug in the .eth domain auctions: 
https://www.coindesk.com/ethereum-name-service-auction-exploited-to-grab-apple-domain-and-it-cant-be-undone 

which claims that ENS could blacklist the domains mentioned in the article. Reading ENS’s website or articles posted by them, they claim to be decentralized service. As far as I know, it is the same case with Ethereum, controlled by multisig contract by few people (not sure how many). I also read about other coins being held in a multisig smart contract.

There was similar case with France.com not long ago, and people were complaining that it only happened because of the DNS centralization. What is the difference between DNS centralization and ENS decentralization, if such exists? As far as I know .bit and .zil once registered cannot be undone, blocked, or blacklisted, which seems a bit more decentralized.

So, if a service (ENS in this case) is controlled by 7 people, isn’t that centralized? I’m seriously confused by the meaning of decentralized when talking about crypto. If a service is controlled by certain number of people or institutions like the US Dollar and standard DNS, USD and DNS could be decentralized service and currency, right?


I’ll appreciate if someone could explain what the entire decentralization means.