Not a defensive of Ripple Labs but I feel I need to say this because people don't always understand. Potential SEC violations are not just a Ripple problem but a problem of any blockchain which had an ICO and sales of those tokens to people or companies in the US. Additionally, Ripple blockchain is not centralized. The blockchain like Steem and Bitcoin are open sourced and anyone can run a node without any fees or XRP. Like many blockchains you choose your validator list and the official list is chosen by consensus. Source: https://ripple.com/build/rippled-setup/ This is also not defense of some of the issues that arise when one group comes to power in a system where if they leave it would cripple the system. So far I haven't seen one blockchain that has adequately solved this problem. The reason being, the nature of decentralized systems means you can have any one opt in or out of running nodes at any time and it's impossible (without getting into the potential for AI type self regulating systems) for a system like that to replace the capacity provided by any group that comes in. All of us rely instead on the trust we feel in the community as a whole and more importantly mass adoption. Now I'm feeling like I should write an article on this.