But replace with what? With people like Vitalik? He seems to be an influential figure and calling the shots. How is this in any way different than a "normal" company with a CEO and a board?
Ideally, open-sourced & audited smart contracts that are ERC-compliant & developed by the general public, with the internal mechanisms made viewable to anyone that wants to learn how such mechanisms work.
> With people like Vitalik? He seems to be an influential figure and calling the shots.
Vitalik can point at where focus could be targeted at, but the decision is ultimately up to the developers themselves. In fact, as far as I can remember, most of the efforts mentioned in the post & image below are not publicly mentioned at all, with other developers leading the charge on that front. (Danksharding being one example, with the development efforts led by Dankrad Feist, hence the name.)
https://twitter.com/VitalikButerin/status/158866978247136870...
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FgwVhUjaAAEx_Bb?format=jpg&name=...
> How is this in any way different than a "normal" company with a CEO and a board?
The main difference is that development is not wholly left to one party: Anyone can choose to develop the applications that they want to see & deploy them onto the platform. Even if you're external from the main development efforts, you can still contribute to the overall ecosystem with code contributions towards one of the various nodes of the entire system. This stands in contrast with a standard company, where external development's forbidden outside of a special area designated for the general public to interact with.