Oh, I agree completely with everything in the top paragraph, and I certainly have seen a natural trend towards central nodes/relays in all the federated network

Oh, I agree completely with everything in the top paragraph, and I certainly have seen a natural trend towards central nodes/relays in all the federated networks I can think of. I think the appeal is that for the average user its about as good security as anything else available, and it has the option to work off the centralized network.