Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin wrote an medium trying to explain the concept of "decentralization".

He discussed in three dimensions from the perspective of software. And this three-dimensional dimension is also three rulers for judging whether a thing is "decentralized":


This is an article written by vitalik in 2017. I went to the field of cryptocurrency in half a year and began to gradually understand what is decentralization, what is anonymity, and what is a hash function. Bitcoin is indeed a magical thing and There are still many areas worth exploring.

Of course, as usual. I searched the keyword “Three types of Decentralization” in the bitcoin Discussion section to make sure that no one has sent the same content before.

Okay, then I will discuss the degree of decentralization of Bitcoin from the above 3 aspects（I only discuss the first two points, I am currently unable to discuss the third point）.

• Architectural (de)centralization — the right of accounting is scattered on several nodes in the Bitcoin network, rather than relying on certain centralized servers. Less than 51% of node failures will still not affect the operation of the Bitcoin system.

When Satoshi  designed Bitcoin, his initial assumption was that 1 CPU and 1 computing power. Everyone can participate in mining as long as they have a computer. Satoshi Nakamoto used his computer to mine the genesis block of Bitcoin and received 50 btc rewards. But as the value of Bitcoin was recognized, starting with 10,000 Bitcoins to exchange for $25 pizza coupons, the price of Bitcoin continued to rise. The market believes that it is profitable, a large amount of new computing power is pouring into Bitcoin mining, and the mining competition has become increasingly fierce.

When the computing power of the entire network is increased to a single node or a small number of nodes cannot obtain block rewards in the Bitcoin network, some people are encouraged to develop a method that can combine a small amount of computing power to jointly operate mining, using this method The connected nodes form a mining pool to keep warm.


It is checked and balanced by the upgrade voting logic of the Bitcoin program. When there is a bug in the Bitcoin program or new features need to be added, the Bitcoin core development group , will propose a solution.
The node is marked by the block header. Voting is conducted, and only miners (mining pools) are able to mark votes at the block header. From here we can draw four conclusions:

1Bitcoin program fixing bugs or modifying the protocol is determined by the Core development team
2Whether the Bitcoin program update takes effect is determined by the mining pool.
3You don’t have the right to vote if you own Bitcoin.
4Core development team and miners can jointly modify the program.

• Political (de)centralization — major changes to the Bitcoin program require nodes to vote before they are allowed to take effect.

Going back to the Bitcoin expansion problem, the mining pool and the Core development team battled wits, and a series of expansion plans were not successfully implemented.
The biggest reason here is that the collaboration between the mining pool and the Core development team cannot reach a consensus, and each is considering its own profit.
But the user who suffers is the user who has no right to participate, only the right to use it.（Of course, ordinary users themselves can also compete for computing power with major mines. but...you know ） A large number of transactions are blocked, transactions have not been confirmed for a long time, and transaction fees have increased.

In my opinion, Bitcoin is not completely decentralized. But it is still the most important step in the decentralization process.

• Logical (de)centralization
  I am not qualified to comment on this, I will comment when I learn more
  

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Sorry, I am not a native English speaker country. Please forgive my grammatical error