The creator of Ethereum criticized centralized platforms for having the ability to decide which cryptocurrencies “become big.” According to Buterin, they do this by charging “these crazy ten to fifteen million dollar listing fees.” He then added that further decentralization would better satisfy the “blockchain values” of “openness and transparency.”
Decentralized exchanges (DEX’s), unlike centralized ones, are built in a such way as to allow users to retain ownership of their cryptocurrencies and private keys. However, DEX’s also have disadvantages - the relative lack of liquidity, compared to their centralized counterparts, being one of the examples.
In the interview, Buterin cited one example to demonstrate the advantages of the current decentralization of Ethereum: “if someone puts a gun to [his] head and tells [him] to write a hard fork patch,” he would definitely do so. However, “relatively few” users would then download and run the update, and that, according to Buterin, “is called decentralization.”
The degree of decentralization of Ethereum itself has been put in question by some experts, who cite, for example, the possibility of collusion between mining pools to manipulate the network.
As of press time, Ethereum is the second largest cryptocurrency with a market capitalization of around $47.5 billion.