Although they were built in response to specific historical necessities, organizations with top-down centralized coordination and hierarchical structures tend to be inherently inefficient. They are based on coercion and they may lack flexibility and capacity to evolve. Providing inadequate responsiveness to challenges and to the growing societal demands. In particular, governments are proved to be systematically exposed to significant risks, such as lack of transparency, corruption, regulatory capture, misuse of power and even regression into authoritarianism, due to the concentration of power in the hands of few13. Which leads to the classic matter: “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” (Who will watch the watchmen?).

A centralized authority in any hierarchical organization can be defined in computer terms as a Single Point of Failure (SPOF): if its functioning is not optimal, the whole system and its participants will be negatively affected by it14. Decentralization aims to 13 “Power corrupts. You can read about that in the writings of the ancient Greek philosophers, and nothing really has changed – only that scale of power, and the scale of misery that can be created when that power is wielded to do bad things” (Andreas Antonopoulos interviewed by Spark, 2014). 6 reduce or prevent such concentration of power and it is a fundamental condition for citizens to achieve political efficacy, equality, transparency, and freedom.