> 4. By design, distributed consensus protocols diffuse responsibility for a function among several difficult-to-identify parties. While this may be an effective way to prevent some kinds of centralization, it also means that making someone accountable for how the function is performed is difficult, and often impossible. While the protocol might use cryptographic techniques to assure correct operation, they may not capture all requirements, and may not be correctly used by the protocol designers.

Ummm, what? If something is decentralized, then that's kind of the point that you can't hold "someone accountable for how the function is performed". If you could hold someone accountable, then you would be able to censor the function at that point of control. This just seems like a criticism of decentralization as a whole.

Also, at the beginning of the Decentralization Techniques section they said...

> "Choosing the appropriate techniques for decentralization requires balancing the specific goals of the function against centralization risk, because completely precluding all forms of centralization through technical means is rarely achievable."

So is it that decentralization is impossible to achieve or that it's achievable, but undesirable? I feel like I'm being gaslighted by the IETF.