> Consider the average "big block chain" - very high block frequency, very high block size, many thousands of transactions per second, but also highly centralized: because the blocks are so big, only a few dozen or few hundred nodes can afford to run a fully participating node that can create blocks or verify the existing chain.<p>He lost me in the first paragraph. Does "highly centralized" mean a "few hundred nodes" to you?<p>When it comes to decentralization, is more always better? Naively, it feels like there's a threshold of decentralization that it's valuable to cross, but beyond which other problems are more worthy of allocating scarce resources towards solving.<p>So, what is that threshold? or more aptly, what is the purpose that decentralization serves and how can we tell that it's satisfied?<p>Or is decentralization really an end in and of itself? If so, can someone explain to the unenlightened why?