[anonymouskimmer]

This blog post has a bunch of citations "showing that some assertion about the cryptocurrency ecosystem that crypto-bros make can't be true". And unfortunately decentralizing away from a small handful of powerful entities is one of these things. Below is one example.

https://blog.dshr.org/2022/09/impossibilities.html#more

"3) Impossibility of Full Decentralization in Permissionless Blockchains by Yujin Kwon et al (1st September 2019) provides a different formalization of the idea that economies of scale drive centralization by introducing the concept of the "Sybil cost":

    the blockchain system should be able to assign a positive Sybil cost, where the Sybil cost is defined as the difference between the cost for one participant running multiple nodes and the total cost for multiple participants each running one node.
    ...
    Considering the current gap between the rich and poor, this result implies that it is almost impossible for a system without Sybil costs to achieve good decentralization. In addition, because it is yet unknown how to assign a Sybil cost without relying on a TTP [Trusted Third Party] in blockchains, it also represents that currently, a contradiction between achieving good decentralization in the consensus protocol and not relying on a TTP exists."