Are some cryptos decentralized while some are not?

[ScamViruS]

But again, I've heard about investors losing their money in crypto due to irregularities from the project owners. And this brings me to wonder if these teams still have control over the crypto that is supposed to be decentralized? Or is it that some cryptocurrencies are decentralized while some are not?

Only Bitcoin is decentralized and most of the other altcoins are centralized, but those altcoins also claim to be decentralized but the reality is that they are not. An altcoin that is skyrocketing today, you may wake up tomorrow morning and see that altcoin crash, so you can't compare altcoin to bitcoin, bitcoin is king true decentralized. So if you want to know about crypto currency you need to spend time here, because the investor who invests in altcoin without proper knowledge misrepresents the entire crypto market.

[hatshepsut93]

Almost all cryptos are centralized in terms of development process. They are developed by a small team, if that team makes a radical change, the community will have no choice but to accept it. Ethereum is the biggest example of it - Vitalik rolled back the blockchain, some users didn't agree and created ETC, but ETC is a minor coin with no future.

Bitcoin is much more decentralized in this regard. It's hard to imagine all developers uniting to do something that goes against Bitcoin values. There are thousands of people who contributed to Bitcoin, and there are dozens/hundreds of highly active contributors. At worst there would be a massive split, but still you can expect a lot of senior contributors to stay true to Bitcoin.

[Hamza2424]

Hearing about Blockchain and cryptocurrency, I got to know that they offer a decentralized system of finance, where each user has control over their crypto, deciding on how and when to use their crypto.

But again, I've heard about investors losing their money in crypto due to irregularities from the project owners. And this brings me to wonder if these teams still have control over the crypto that is supposed to be decentralized? Or is it that some cryptocurrencies are decentralized while some are not?

Hmm, Blockchain decentralization is based on how the network works, As you know BTC works with the POW distributed network, in simple you can say this is one of the most decentralized networks in the crypto market because there are no fixed numbers of nodes that can be used to manipulate the network. In BLOckhain like ETH and BSC, there are some fixed number of nodes that are responsible for the security of the Blockchain, and proper functioning if someone wants to crack the network all he needs to do is to control over a few nodes to gain network power.

But on any blockchain network such type of hacking or loss of information is rare, At the same time Hackers attack the DeFi protocols, the application on the network where users perform the activity, and mutate the Dapps to steal the user's funds, i.e.. DEXs, Bridges, cross-chain swaps, borrowing lending paltforms.

[libert19]

At one end of the spectrum, we have cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum, which are known for their high degree of decentralization.

You probably haven't heard about the roll back of Ethereum transaction to save the ass of a DAO from a hack although Vitalik Buterin doesn't agree that it was a roll back; they intervened. Whatever it was, it was centralization.
Is this what you call decentralization? LOL.
https://bitcoinist.com/ethereum-network-not-rolled-back-after-dao-hack/

Wow! I wasn't aware of this happening despite being active in Ethereum ecosystem since long, so this is the reason why Ethereum is hated by most old members here.

For those interested in detailed story: https://www.coindesk.com/consensus-magazine/2023/05/09/coindesk-turns-10-how-the-dao-hack-changed-ethereum-and-crypto/

[Outhue]

This is the problem with new crypto investors, we want another Bitcoin that's decentralized because we believe that we are too late to the Richie of Bitcoin, Decentralized is not something any developer can just come out and say they can offer, it's probably not true.

Soon you will see them asking for KYC or some type of verification, I can use Ethereum as an example, when it was running the PoW algorithm I believe it's another Bitcoin with smart contract features but after they start saying they are going proof of stake I started to hate the project.

A project starts with a feature that many adopters adopted it for that reason and along the way the project decide to switch into something that looks more centralized, isn't that a betrayal? Bitcoin is the only coin that stays the same.

[tabas]

Honestly, the term decentralized is being used and abused by many project developers. They tend to mention that they're a decentralized project but lies behind that, they're not. Bitcoin is decentralized and that's what the meaning of it. And don't buy onto those projects that have been labelling themselves as a decentralized project. Another thing, DeFis are no longer a thing today.

What was originally decentralized then changed to centralized because of several changes made. Related to the ecosystem is the POW consensus Network change to POS and Bitcoin stays with POW and ETH changes from POW to POS.

Right, we have witnessed the change of PoW of Ethereum into PoS but even before that, ETH was actually semi-centralized as what they've said.

However, when it comes to exchange platforms, exchanges such as Binance, Coinbase, etc. are centralized, and there will be many obstacles and risks that could occur. Not your keys not your coins.

The majority of them are centralized honestly. There were even a few of them that have claimed that they were decentralized but also changed into centralized eventually.

and projects that claim they are decentralized must certainly prove it by the consensus network they use

Yup, when you're for the decentralized projects then you have to DYOR before investing on any of them. As I've said, many are just using the term as a buzz word to attract investors.