Jul 1, 2025

From improved security and fault tolerance to faster peer-to-peer interactions, decentralization delivers real-world advantages that centralized models still struggle to match at scale. Below, members of Forbes Technology Council discuss some of the benefits of decentralized infrastructure in real-world applications. These capabilities can boost operational agility, increase user trust and support long-term scalability while helping reduce risk. 1. Always-On Continuity Centralized systems are relics, built for predictable loads, human interactions and ideal conditions. But in the real world, everything fails—and AI makes it fail faster. Decentralized infrastructure delivers the resilience, control and always-on continuity that AI-native workloads don't just prefer—they require. It's the backbone of the next software era. - Spencer Kimball Cockroach Labs 2. Freedom To Tailor To Specific Requirements Different functions within an enterprise have different needs. R&D, for example, has different infrastructure requirements than the accounting or marketing departments. Decentralized infrastructure provides degrees of freedom to tailor infrastructure to best support the requirements of each function. - Michael Connell Enthought Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify? 3. Real-Time Adaptability Decentralized systems offer real-time adaptability. By spreading control and decision-making, they avoid single points of failure, reduce bottlenecks and stay resilient under stress. Unlike centralized models, they scale naturally, recover faster and enable trusted collaboration without relying on one authority. - Rohit Ayyagari SunRun 4. Resilience A standout real-world advantage of decentralized infrastructure is its resilience—specifically, the absence of a single point of failure. In decentralized systems, operations and data are distributed across multiple nodes or departments, so if one node fails or is attacked, the rest of the system can continue functioning independently. - Shilpa Shastri Apptio 5. Performance Enhancement A key differentiator of decentralized infrastructure—beyond resilience and fault tolerance—is the performance enhancement it delivers by placing compute resources closer to end users. This proximity, fundamental to core-to-edge architectures, significantly reduces latency and improves user experience. - Kiran Patibandla 6. Compartmentalization Of Risk Failing fast and innovating efficiently are real-world advantages of decentralized infrastructures. They compartmentalize risk, allowing failures to remain isolated while providing learning opportunities. This is a powerful benefit that enables organizations to be more agile in today's rapidly changing technology landscape. Centralized systems struggle with decision bottlenecks and rigid processes. - Manikandarajan Shanmugavel S&P Global 7. Enhanced Data Privacy Decentralized infrastructure offers a level of data privacy that centralized systems still struggle to match. By processing sensitive data on local devices or edge nodes—for example, hospitals training AI models on site—organizations gain insights without moving raw data, ensuring regulatory compliance and maintaining user trust. This eliminates central data honeypots, which often invite breaches. - Murugan Lakshmanan 8. Scaled Trust Without Permission Decentralized systems do one thing beautifully: They scale trust without permission. Central systems choke on control. But when power is distributed, innovation flows faster, resilience grows stronger and users aren't just endpoints—they're part of the engine. - Oleg Sadikov DeviQA 9. Graceful Degradation During Disasters Graceful degradation during disasters is one thing decentralized systems do well. When Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico, mesh networks and blockchain-based communication systems kept isolated communities connected while centralized telecom infrastructure failed completely. Decentralized systems don't just survive catastrophe—they adapt and reroute automatically, turning every node into a potential lifeline. - Prashanth Cecil Amazon Inc. 10. Speed Of Response A decentralized infrastructure offers speed of response for localized consumers. Consider content delivery networks (a.k.a. CDNs)—they scale well and stream rich content like videos or images with little lag because the storage is closer to the consumer location. If it were centralized in a distant part of the world, then it would create a huge lag and a degraded quality of service delivery challenge. - Anshul Kumar Paylocity 11. More Reliable Uptime Decentralized systems excel in terms of uptime. Centralized systems are controlled by one authority that determines access; one authority controlling a network means a single point of failure. Centralized systems lack Byzantine Fault Tolerance, so if one node goes down, the entire network will go down, severely disrupting network activity. - Daniel Keller InFlux Technologies Limited (FLUX) 12. Resistance To Censorship And Hardware Faults Centralized systems can't match decentralized systems because of the problems stemming from centralization itself. If a task can be performed in more than one way by equal peers working together—much in the way an ant colony or swarm of bees works—then the system is resistant to censorship and hardware faults and has service continuity due to economic sustainability. - Viktor Trón Swarm 13. Organic Scaling A key advantage of decentralized infrastructure is its ability to scale organically without getting held up by central bottlenecks. Instead of waiting on a single point of control, the system grows by adding resources where needed, making it more agile and resilient in meeting demand, something centralized models often struggle with. - Judit Sharon OnPage Corporation 14. Democratized Services Decentralized infrastructure's key advantage lies in its ability to democratize services and achieve “last mile” reach, offering unparalleled scalability without the bottlenecks inherent in centralized systems. While central control has merits, true enterprise-level scaling, especially for global service delivery, necessitates the distributed resilience and innovation fostered by decentralization. - Anil Pantangi Capgemini America Inc. 15. Cost Efficiency One real-world advantage of decentralized infrastructure is cost efficiency. By using a distributed node network instead of large central data centers, organizations can reduce infrastructure expenses, minimize upfront investments and tap into existing resources—something centralized systems often struggle to achieve at scale. - Tarun Eldho Alias Neem Inc. 16. Spread Of Functions Decentralized systems offer superior reliability by spreading functions across various independent nodes. This approach removes single points of failure, allowing services to remain operational even during disruptions or cyberthreats—a level of resilience that centralized architectures often struggle to provide at scale. - Yuriy Gnatyuk Kindgeek 17. Support For Global-Scale, Always-On Apps If we look at this from a database point of view, decentralized systems—like MongoDB or Cassandra—offer high availability and fault tolerance by replicating data across nodes with no single point of failure, unlike centralized systems like mySQL or Oracle. They remain resilient during outages, making them ideal for global-scale, always-on apps. To achieve a similar effect in centralized systems is not cost-effective. - Santosh Ratna Deepika Addagalla Trizetto Provider Solutions 18. Better UX Decentralized systems offer the ability to maintain and rapidly scale a diverse global infrastructure footprint and effectively serve customers close to where they actually reside. This can lead to greater customer satisfaction and superior end-user experience—especially in internet-facing domains such as media streaming, Web gaming and trading, which require high performance, real-time response and low-latency connectivity. - Mrutyunjay Mohapatra , Alix Partners