Core developers never had control in the first place. No one has control; it's weird to see so many people applying authoritarian concepts to an anti-authoritarian system.
No one has hard-control over bitcoin, but the leading dev group has some manner of soft/non-coercive control (by momentum alone).
That is not how power works.
For one thing, it isn't a binary value. It is not that either have power or don't. It is a very complicated thing; even calling it a "continuum" greatly oversimplifies because power is much more nuanced than can be mapped to a mere straight line.
If that is not something you already deeply know, consider replacing all instances of the word "power" with "influence", which is much closer.
It is safe to say that the core developers have had some power/influence. It is safe to say that certain large minors have also had power/influence. Small minors also have small amounts of power/influence, it's just dominated by other concerns, but it exists.
Decentralized doesn't mean nobody has any power or influence, it means a lot of people have power and influence, and nobody is supposed to have enough to simply dictate the result. And while I'm not involved with this and don't care, it definitely sounds like a classic power struggle. Bitcoin was never premised on the idea that there would never be power struggles... indeed, the promise of extreme decentralization is all but a promise that there will be lots of power struggles. The question is, which do you prefer: A system which attempts to structure things so that one central authority can not arise and every thus question is settled by a power struggle, or one in which power struggles are resolved by the rise of a central authority who simply wins them all?
(And if you conceive of "power struggle" as always being a vicious war, that may sound very dystopian. However, bear in mind that all voting systems, agreements to follow Robert's Rules of Order, mostly-hierarchial system such as most companies use, and any number of other structures are all systems for resolving "power struggles". Power struggles can be vicious and disproportional, or polite, genteel, and not a major hassle for anyone. But they're all still "power struggles".)
Now that Bitcoin hit a scaling ceiling and a competitor who can scale way beyond Bitcoin is rapidely taking the lead, they finally realize why Core/Blockstream strategy is bad for them, and bad for Bitcoin. Hence they came up with setwit2x, wich is a weak attempt to get ride of Blockstream (because its segwit first, then 2Mb blocks, then... not much), but a strong signal that something is changing.
You need consensus on the blockchain, but you need a benevolent dictator, coupled with good communication, to make great opensource software.
While the Blockchain is democratic in nature, a dev team is oligarchic - an open technocracy. You want the best idea to win, not the most popular one.
Maybe in 100 years we will make great software by group vote, its a much harder problem to solve.
Isn't "wherever the market is" wherever spending power is?
In the new world, everyone has their own universe. The sooner one believes, the stronger their position in the 2030 economy.
Imagine a "Confederacy Coin" that forks from a "US Federal Coin". You don't think that cold survive?
True.
> No one has control
Also true. For now.
> it's weird to see so many people applying authoritarian concepts to an anti-authoritarian system.
Not true. First of all, it's a system and you can't get more authoritarian than a system.
Then are externalities called people. And people collude and cooperate and form factions. That's because they're people and that's what people do.
So while they don't have control directly, if they form a majority they will. The minority are free to vacate this virtuality if they don't like the new rules.
You see, BitWorld really isn't so different from the real world.