We all know that decentralization is important, but just how important is it? Well, you might say it's the entire foundation of cryptocurrency in general. Bitcoin came to life as the result of the 2008 "financial crisis" (because 'depression' is a trigger word). The entire point of cryptocurrency is to divide control of a currency between the large community using it. This way the system will be far less prone to corruption and counterfeiting.
51% Attack
51% attacks could be happening way more often than they are. However, those with the power to make it happen would only be hurting themselves. If you own a bunch of Bitcoin and then you turn around and start trying to double spend it, you'll just end up devaluing your entire investment. Therefore, even though Bitcoin mining is horribly centralized it still has a pretty stable foundation. A centralized Bitcoin is still 1000 times more decentralized than a fiat currency.
When a fiat currency becomes corrupt, more money is simply printed and hyperinflation can ensue. The transparent nature of cryptocurrency makes printing more impossible. The only way to create inflation on a blockchain is to follow the rules that the community has come to consensus around. This fundamental difference gives the vast majority of cryptocurrencies far more potential than their fiat counterparts.
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Airdrops
Decentralization is so valuable that blockchain architects have realized that their currency becomes worth more if they simply give coins away for free. Most of us already received our free Byteball airdrop. EOS revolves around a system of airdrops. I believe as time goes on airdrops will become smarter and smarter. If you give crypto to someone who's simply going to sell it on the open market, this is extremely counterproductive. You could have just put those coins on the open market yourself to fund the project. This behavior devalues the currency.
However, if you can find people that believe in the project, want to hold coins, and be a part of the community, giving away free coins makes a lot of sense. These people have a higher chance of buying even more coins on their own and interacting with the platform in a positive way. I believe many advanced heuristics will be crafted with the sole attempt of identifying these kinds of citizens.
Ultimate goal
As decentralization increases, a coin is more insured to be a success. This creates a chain reaction of even more decentralization, because more timid users will be willing to jump on board when the blockchain becomes further validated.
Governance.
Blockchain governance is dictated by decentralization. When more people have decision-making powers, it's much more likely that corruption is avoided. Decisions that get made are far more likely to benefit the people who made them. This is true for all goverments, blockchain and otherwise. Therefore, a truly decentralized blockchain is much more likely to make governance decisions based on the good of whole, rather than the individual in charge, because everyone is in charge.
The truly revolutionary thing about Steem is that our system is already set up to give money away for free in the form of upvotes. We have a big leg up on many other blockchains at the moment. Our community interacts more and we form personal relationships because the foundation of Steemit is social media.
Also, unlike current airdrops, the upvote system is already far more intelligent. We tout proof-of-brain here. In effect, Steem is at the forefront of developing smart-airdrop heuristics. Many of the votes that go out were approved by hand. This implies that proof-of-brain does not just apply for content creators, but for upvoters as well. If effect, you could rightfully upvote trash content, but at the same time know the user you're upvoting is solid and will benefit the platform as a whole.
For example, @fulltimegeek has a list of users he randomly upvotes with his bot army. This means his bots constantly upvote content that he would not choose to upvote himself, but he believes in the users on his list, so that is enough to bring value to the platform. I choose to be part of the botnet because I believe in it's merit. Even though I've upvoted users that I would normally never upvote, I choose to stay part of the net. The whole is greater than the sum of it's parts. Synergy is important.
Conclusion
In these times where the market is a sea of red, look on the bright side. The farther the value of a crypto drops the more opportunity for decentralization. After all, this is the most important variable when evaluating a given blockchain.
🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀 (OMG buy more Steem it's under $1) 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀
P.S.
Ripple (XRP) is garbage.
As someone said, Ripple XRP is like some kid who think he can fly as Superman just because he can use his towel as a cap. A "decentralized crypto" with a guy in charge is a scam!