If you spend time with crypto people, a word you will hear a lot is decentralization. The word describes a form of governance, but it also stands for much more than that—it’s an ideal to which every blockchain project is supposed to aspire and has taken on a near-religious status. And that can be a problem.
I was reminded of this when talking to Jesse Walden, cofounder of VC fund Variant, which has just hired prominent crypto lawyer Jake Chervinsky to help the firm and its 30 or so portfolio companies navigate the perilous regulatory waters for U.S. blockchain projects. The pair said this task often involves designing a process of “progressive decentralization.”
