Comment by wslh
1 day ago
Bitcoin (et al) is/are not fully decentralized in the sense that a core development team actively maintains and proposes changes, even minimal ones. While it's true that major updates require broad consensus and may be rejected by nodes if controversial, we should acknowledge that certain points of centralization exist, particularly around development and decision making. These often overlooked aspects now carry more financial consequences, especially as Bitcoin becomes more intertwined with regulated financial instruments and political power.
For example, now, many L2s around Bitcoin are fully depending , and influencing on a future change: enabling again the OP_CAT opcode [1].
Bitcoin can be forked, and in fact has been. You didn't mention mining centralization, which is another avenue.
One of the biggest points of failure I can see happening is self hosted node packaged software services like umbrel. Where they are just updating your node for you.