[thomasrognon]

I don't think Satoshi's opinion would be any different now. Decentralization as a primary goal and maximizing it at all costs is a narrative that grew after he left. It was originally a means to an end and things just needed to be decentralized enough to be resilient. Relevant Satoshi quote:

The current system where every user is a network node is not the intended configuration for large scale. That would be like every Usenet user runs their own NNTP server. The design supports letting users just be users. The more burden it is to run a node, the fewer nodes there will be. Those few nodes will be big server farms. The rest will be client nodes that only do transactions and don't generate. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=532.msg6306#msg6306

[SkyMarshal]

The problem with that quote is that if "the rest" of the client nodes also can't validate, then Bitcoin is centralized and completely pointless. Mining is already effectively centralized, the only check and balance against collusion of miners is a robust and engaged community of users running full nodes.

The client nodes have to validate in addition to only doing transactions. Satoshi doesn't say that in his comment. But the faster the block size growth, the faster it gets to "every Usenet user runs their own NNTP server", and the fewer and fewer run full validating nodes.

His comment is self-contradictory.