Saying something isn’t decentralized in the crypto world can mean any of a number of things. The problem is that decentralization isn’t one specific thing that

Saying something isn’t decentralized in the crypto world can mean any of a number of things. The problem is that decentralization isn’t one specific thing that can be measured. There’s absolute centralization like a mainframe controlled by a single individual not connected to the outside world. Beyond that nothing else is absolute, there’s just varying degrees of decentralization. You could have a slightly decentralized governance like a consortium that votes on how to manage the mainframe. You could have a distributed network of computers all managed by a single entity. Each of those have elements of centralization and decentralization. Within those categories there is varying levels of decentralization. For instance there could be a completely democratic organization that votes on how to manage the mainframe or more of a republic style where members vote on a person to manage the mainframe for them. So, when someone says something isn’t decentralized in the crypto world they typically mean some element is centralized or is slightly less decentralized. For bitcoin you will see people say this in reference to large mining pools that have the power to control consensus to a certain extent. For NEM, they’re probably referring to the fact that the nodes that control the network are closed source. Since they are closed source that means one entity can control the direction of the network, and one can’t simply fork what they’re building. I’m of the opinion that there will never be complete decentralization, and every project will have some degree is centralization. We’ll get better with time, but I think decentralization is an inherently intractable problem.