Series: What Crypto Governance Actually Is (Part 3 of 5)

Early crypto narratives framed decentralization as the removal of centralized control.

The expectation was simple: if no single authority governs the system, power cannot concentrate.

But the governance crises of Bitcoin and Ethereum revealed something more structural.

Eliminating formal authority does not eliminate power.

It changes how power is exercised.

After those crises, networks faced a choice: embed formal governance mechanisms directly into the protocol, or allow decisions to emerge through informal social consensus.

These two approaches, on-chain governance and off-chain governance, have become the dominant models in cryptocurrency.

They do not eliminate power.

They structure it differently.