This can work for large N because people fill roles. If you travel today to some other place and want to buy bread, you don't need to know the name of a bread seller in that place. You look for a store that looks like it sells food and ask if they have bread. If they don't, they will probably be able to direct you to a store that does.
If you do something wrong, this can either be tracked by something you're required to keep on your person such as an ID or a tattoo, or by some commonly accessible records.
Since this is a tech site, you can think of it like interactions between objects in object-oriented programming. A billion objects can interact with each other in all sorts of ways without requiring some central manager.