Why? The developers have full, 100% control, or better yet, the OP who starts a thread on Bitcointalk and places a link to download wallet is in charge. OR if its a classy coin with a *.org website, the person who has access to upload files to the FTP then can change the wallet and upload a new QT that changes EVERYTHING about a coin. Hard fork it, even chain the blockchain to reroute old transactions that are "confirmed".
So can someone tell me WHY we call these "decentralized" when the dude with the password to the ftp site has 100% control?
well i guess the OP has some power yes... so does the dev in real terms (usually the same person anyway) i mean most people just blindly update their wallets to the next version. I would not have though the doge users would have updated to the fork with infinite coins...not saying i think it is a bad idea. However everyone updated pretty fast, they mostly have blind faith in the dev. People who check the source perhaps think a bit before updating.
However if they did not update their wallets then the dev can't implement any changes... so the power is with the users, but since mostly they all update as soon as there is a new wallet the dev does have some power too.
Check points are something i am not sure about... only the dev has the control of those i think...although i am not sure entirely what they do and how they effect the coin.
Nothing to do with the topic as I think the answer is pretty obvious, checkpoints only tell the clients what the correct chain is, the community could still fork the currency if they most chose to move to a new client, and for example that might have new check point nodes or none.
Checkpoints were touted as centralized back when people knew nothing about them and they were frustrated by the fact that they couldn't attack NVC all that long time ago, back in the old golden days of crypto.
