Anyone can participate in consensus, but you do have to be trusted by someone else who already participates in the trusted consensus, so you're right that it's

Anyone can participate in consensus, but you do have to be trusted by someone else who already participates in the trusted consensus, so you're right that it's not completely decentralized (but is also not strictly centralized either). Here's a current visualization of how many participants there are: https://stellarbeat.io/ https://stellarbeat.io/