[darkFunction]

> So, honest question: why care about the base layer being decentralized if in the end, you choose to trust those companies? What did the decentralization do for you in that interaction?

My trust extended only as far as a single interaction/asset. The rest of my wallet and the assets within are completely unaffected. A company might rip me off, and I might have legal recourse, or I might not. Such is life. We won't ever be able to decentralise away all trust. A single entity isn't able to manipulate all my assets, or print more tokens, or confiscate my money. The network is solid even if all the 'performers' are not.

To build a centralised 'universal API' on which applications can communicate and exchange value is a terrible idea. Who would own it? But such an API is surely a useful technology.

We do need reliable oracles for external data feeds- prices, weather, news... can all feed into contracts for extra utility. This is a hard problem being tackled by ChainLink and others.