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If it takes a vast majority of participants to agree, then not really. It's decentralized, not 100% immutable. Will get harder as it gets larger but at this stage it is good to still have the ability.



Vast majority however means most mining pools. In practice that's not that many people making the decision.


At this stage yes. That's why I don't hold ether as being solid enough yet to be a store of value, aside from the fact that it's being inflated at ~25% pa. Needs to go through these teething problems now while that is still the case.


Why would that be different at later stages? Bitcoin grew more centralized with time, not decentralized: The miners with the most powerful equipment also have the most ability to become even more powerful.

Why is that different for Ethereum?


It's not that simple. In the end it's what users actually use that matters. Mining on a fork that sees no use would be suicidal. So miners need to follow users, or their investment is for nothing. And users tend to follow developers, at least until there is a contentious fork.

So while there is no clear single party that makes decisions, active developers have the most say.


It's not that it's centralised, it's that the cost of the precedent set by a fork and rollback doesn't mean it is seen as a terminal failure.


As 'fuel' for programming smart contracts it's still a valuable tool but it doesn't make writing those contracts easy.




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