Centralization vs Decentralization : Who is Taking The Spotlight

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Good day readers, I am here with another interesting yet educative and qualitative post. I was looking into the areas that have been decentralized and I found out that they are more than that that meets the eye. Decentralization is truly starting to take over the areas that centralization was known for and it doesn't stop there. Now let's look at these areas where decentralization is slowly and steadily taking over.

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Formerly before the advent of decentralization, everything was centralized which means there was a central body or third party with partial or major control over that thing. They can choose to undo our actions and even block us from doing more because they are the owners but everything is changing as time goes on.

Decentralized Apps

These are open source applications that run on a peer to peer network. When you hear the word decentralized apps you can deduce that they are apps that have shared and similar responsibilities. The control doesn't lie on one major party but it is vested on numerous users. Now decentralized applications are taking over in various aspects and I will be listing them below.

Gaming

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Usually gaming is always Centralized and the main authority monitor and have control over your games and even the game progress. If they feel something suspicious is going on in your account, they can block your account and you won't have a say. Centralized games usually come with bugs and modded versions but as Decentralized games come into existence, you have major control over your game outcome and it is much harder to hack. Failure in a system in the game doesn't affect the whole gamers unlike in a situation where a centralized game is closed for maintenance and hinders all the players. Decentralized games now offer various rewards like metaverse tokens, tokens and even NFTs. Examples of decentralized games include etheremon and fomo3D.

Music

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As an upcoming artist who would love to post his music online so the world would listen and as a song lover who likes to listen to song from various parts of the world, we have always had to rely on centralized platforms like SoundCloud, Apple music, Boomplay, Audiomack but now a Decentralized means of doing these same things have been made available through Decentralized music apps like Audius which gives artists more control over their music without being assigned to record labels. Dapps like Audius also pay their users for their music content depending on the value it brings unlike in a centralized system where the label/app takes a large percentage of the songs earnings.

Blogging and social media

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I'm sure we are all familiar with Twitter, reddit, Facebook, Pinterest and so on. What if I tell you that decentralized apps that offer same and even better services are in existence. You heard me right, decentralized platforms like Steemit, Blurt and Hive have brought about a new era in the blogging and social media experience. If you tweet something that the twitter company finds offensive, they can delete and even ban your account for good but if you here on Steemit, you can steem to your hearts content i.e you have complete control over your account and your identity can be kept from the knowledge of others. If I post something on Twitter or Facebook I don't get any monetary value for my post but on Steemit/hive/blurt depending on the quality of the post you would be duly curated.

Messaging

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Centralized messaging applications like Snapchat and Whatsapp where any message sent on their platform is seen and controlled by the main owner of the platform. Hence if exposed to attack from hackers, alot of people information would be made available to the intruders but on Decentralized messaging applications like Status which offers peer 2 peer messaging. On status app, the sender encrypts the message which goes to numerous people on the network but only the receiver with the private keys can decrypt and access this message. Hence it is highly secure and it gives the user total control over their account. Creating accounts on the status messaging app is very easy as they do not require much user information.

Sport Betting/Gambling

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Many people might not like gambling or the idea of gambling but attimes it takes a gamble or two in life to make it big. For those who are used to sport betting especially football and basketball lovers, you put in your money, stake the game, pick games with favourable odds and leave the football club to do the rest. There are centralized applications that make these easier for us to use like sportybet, betway, betking and so on. Decentralized betting apps are already doing something similar. DApps like betDex give better incentives and performs transactions at high speed. Making betting easier and faster.

Exchanges

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The last category for today's post is exchanges. Centralized exchanges like Binance and Huobi pro who have partial control over our accounts have been trampled by Decentralized exchanges like SunSwap, JustLend which gives us total control over the exchange of our assets. From time to time, centralized exchanges go on server maintenance to restore or fix a system problem and this affects all their users. For instance, on Binance exchange at the moment steem transfers have been placed on temporary hold but if it were a Decentralized exchange, a minor setback in it's operation wouldn't affect all it's users and it would be fixed as soon as possible.

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Centralization was supreme and reigning all over the world but humans felt the need to take charge over their belongs without entrusting it to a third party and so decentralization came along and brought our wishes to reality. There might be setbacks to Decentralization but nothing comes without its disadvantages. As time goes on Decentralization would keep taking over centralized things until centralization slowly fades away. Thanks for reading.

[10% to @tron-fan-club]

Cc. @steemcurator05 and @irawandedy