Whether you like it or not, a large portion of the top 100 projects are fully centralized, VC governed platforms that don't actually differ much from the traditional business structure.
VCs have found a new industry to milk, and so far they've been quite successful. And that's fine, what's not fine though, is the fact that they claim to be decentralized, while in reality being far from it.
Perhaps this is a bold statement to make but when you scroll down through Coingecko, it becomes obvious what's the current state of affairs.
Decentralization became marginalized to a point where its no longer required or measured as a factor to consider prior to investing. Unfortunately, this is a fact, the market speaks louder than words.
But why is that?
To begin with, centrally governed projects tend to operate faster and execute tasks much more efficiently. In such a scenario, the rules of the game can be changed instantly, without reaching any consensus or approval by the community. There are some benefits to it, faster response in times of uncertainty, the ability to adapt quickly to upcoming challenges, and a much higher experimental potential.
The trade-offs are obvious.
The fact that someone can change the rules without you being able to do anything, put your assets at risk of being devalued by a single bad decision. It doesn't even have to be malicious, it can be a poor prediction or bad calculation, but it doesn't matter, you lost without a fight.
And that's fine in case you're aware of how the governance work, who holds the strains, and who dictates the tempo, but otherwise it's a fraud.
DAOs
On the other hand, DAOs require the majority of the votes from the community and stakeholders to reach a consensus in order to approve the changes. Obviously, decentralized decision-making is a lot slower and less agile to adapt to the market environment.
However, such an approach not only increases the security of the ledge, but also incentivizes everyone to analyze the proposal and polish the game theory behind it, in an attempt of finding the best solution possible. It demands personal due diligence and research because the changes will affect your future rewards, influencing you to act responsible.
My point is that Hive and similar fully functional DAOs will become ultra rare GEMS with a potential to usurp enormous amount of value from the market. I guess we just have to wait a bit more.