5/ Some people argue that PoS can become as centralized as PoW (or worse) over time.
In particular, large exchanges can leverage network effects to offer staking services at extremely competitive prices.
6/ But: exchanges running large stake pools are arguably still better than large mining operators.
First, exchanges are geographically well distributed, as they occupy different market niches.
7/ In particular, fiat on-ramps specialize in different regulatory environments (e.g., Coinbase in the US, Kraken in Europe, Bithump in South Korea, etc).
Unregulated exchanges occupy yet another niche.
8/ Second, there are also strategies to further mitigate PoS centralization by offering more decentralized delegation.
People who ask what apps are running on #Cardano $ADA to justify a #3 spot are missing the point.
From the start, @InputOutputHK prioritized the rollout of a decentralized PoS system ("Shelley") over smart contracts ("Goguen"), scaling ("Basho"), and governance ("Voltaire").
1/
They could have just gone for the low hanging fruit and create yet another dPOS like $Tron and $EOS.
But it was known already back then that dPOS gravitates towards cartel formation and centralization.
2/
Instead, they tackled the hardest problem first, started from first principles, published tons of research papers, and made a couple of good design decisions IMO.
The great thing about inflation is that it incentivizes miners to secure the network even if there are few transactions. BTC users can rely on this baseline security at all times.