[dlubarov]

The centralized leadership has no hard power though; the community normally goes along with changes they propose because they're normally sensible. If they go rogue, people will stop following their proposals.

In Vitalik's words: "If someone puts a gun to my head and tells me to write a hard-fork patch, I will definitely write it. If I publish a patch to delete a bunch of accounts, how many people here would download and install the update and switch to that chain? I see relatively few raised hands. This is called decentralization"