More than ten years ago the blockchain was acclaimed as the solution to overcome centralised trusted third parties for online payments. Through the years the crypto-movement changed and evolved, although decentralisation remained the core ideology and the necessary feature every new crypto-project should provide. In this paper we study the concept of centralisation in cryptocurrencies using a wide array of methodologies from the complex systems literature, on a comparative collection of blockchains, in order to define the many different levels a blockchain system may display (de-)centralisation and to question whether the present state of cryptocurrencies is, in a technological and economical sense, actually decentralised.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2206.05081,
title = {The Evolution Of Centralisation on Cryptocurrency Platforms},
author = {Carlo Campajola and Raffaele Cristodaro and Francesco Maria De Collibus and Tao Yan and Nicolo' Vallarano and Claudio J. Tessone},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2206.05081},
year = {2023}
}