Decentralisation
Decentralisation means no single actor controls a system or can switch it off.
Explained simply
In a centralised system there is one party that decides: the bank, the server, the provider. If it fails or acts against your interests, you are affected.
In a decentralised system control and data are spread across many independent participants. None of them can change the rules, freeze accounts or shut down the network alone.
Decentralisation is not a yes/no but a matter of degree. Bitcoin is highly decentralised, many smaller projects only in name.
From the familiar world
The internet itself: nobody owns it, it has no master switch and keeps working when individual servers fail. A centralised system would be the old telephone exchange, where one outage brings everything down.
An example
When a major cloud provider's servers went down in 2021, countless apps stood still. The Bitcoin blockchain kept running unchanged because it lives on thousands of independent machines.
Why it matters
The degree of decentralisation is a quality marker when comparing networks. It determines how robust a system is against outage, censorship and manipulation.
To pass on
„Decentralised means there is no master switch and no boss. The system keeps running even if individual participants drop out.“
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