More than ten years ago the blockchain was acclaimed as the solution to overcome centralised trusted third parties for online payments. Through the years the crypto-movement changed and evolved, although decentralisation remained the core ideology and the necessary feature every new crypto-project should provide. In this paper we study the concept of centralisation in cryptocurrencies using a wide array of methodologies from the complex systems literature, on a comparative collection of blockchains, in order to define the many different levels a blockchain system may display (de-)centralisation and to question whether the present state of cryptocurrencies is, in a technological and economical sense, actually decentralised.

翻译：十多年前，区块链被誉为克服在线支付中中心化可信第三方的解决方案。多年来，加密货币运动不断变化与演进，尽管去中心化始终是核心意识形态，也是每个新加密货币项目必须提供的必要特性。本文利用复杂系统文献中的广泛方法论，在多个区块链的比较集合中研究加密货币中的中心化概念，旨在定义区块链系统可能呈现（去）中心化的多个不同层面，并探讨从技术和经济意义上而言，加密货币的当前状态是否真正实现了去中心化。