>I have to trust that at least 51% of validators are honest Those 51% are third parties. Full stop. There is no difference. You don't control them, they are no

>I have to trust that at least 51% of validators are honest Those 51% are third parties. Full stop. There is no difference. You don't control them, they are not you, they are not your friends. They're third parties. You can argue why you trust them more than "centralized institutions" but that doesn't make them not third parties. And this of course is assuming that the validators aren't centralized and will never become centralized, which there is no guarantee that it won't happen or has not already happened. I am not making this up either, this is a design parameter of the system; the fallacious premise of blockchains appears to readily assume that miners/validators will become greedy and hostile but also seems to trust them not to centralize and attack the network, for some reason that has not held up in practice.