The invention of decentralised public ledgers enabled the rise of crypto coins, NFTs and publicly verifiable digital identities. With it, communities emerged around their production, accumulation and distribution: from managing stablecoins to distributing grants. In each case, people from all over the globe coalesced into communities that pivoted around one or more on-chain asset: helping to build infrastructure, create applications or speculate on the market. The resulting blockchain space is exceedingly complex, blockchain communities are internally immensely diverse and the challenges they face ever harder to navigate.

A rather sceptical silence often ensues when I start about entering the crypto and so-called web3 scene. Few have missed the headlines around SBF’s trial and many have picked up on the use of Bitcoin and Ethereum in ransomware, romance scams and other online fraud. Others have heard about the use of blockchain hacks to help bankroll unsavoury regimes, with North Korea being the most damning example. Why on earth is someone like me getting into that scene?

Disclaimer: I wrote this blogpost as I was getting into the topic of decentralisation. I did become more understanding over time. A follow-up can be found here.

A word that you keep on running into when getting into the web3 space is 'decentralisation'. Drawing on \_gabrielShapir0, I'll take decentralisation to mean the equal distribution of a system's accepted forms of power, protecting users against their arbitrary use from the recognized legitimate 'authorities'. Decentralisation, in other words, refers to the way power is structured within a community and its legitimate use among its members.