A good example of the latter type of decentralization is Bitcoin. Other than the consensus protocol itself, there are no formal governance rules existing among mining nodes, non-mining nodes, users, exchanges and core developers, but these groups all have different kinds of influence over Bitcoin and essentially govern Bitcoin on an emergent basis ... See more

More recently, new sites like Sci-Hub and LibGen have achieved far faster and more complete results by playing outside the rules and essentially making every academic paper in the world free of charge, to anyone, at any time, in any country – including poor people in poor places without access to expensive journal subscriptions. Let's call this the... See more