Decentralization is part of the cryptocurrency industry’s core, with various protocols trying over time to achieve the level of decentralization that Bitcoin (BTC) managed to get as it grew organically from a white paper published to a mailing list to a new asset class.
Decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols have brought the idea of decentralization to a new level with the use of governance tokens, which give holders the right to vote on or submit proposals regarding issues that govern the development and operations of a project. Governance tokens often represent investors’ ownership in decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), which operate using smart contracts.