Decentralization of Independence by Penrose Deer

"A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution. Digital signatures provide part of the solution, but the main benefits are lost if a trusted third party is still required to prevent double-spending. We propose a solution to the double-spending problem using a peer-to-peer network. "

https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

"Another part of the experiment is the underlying blockchain technology as a tool of distributed consensus. Commonly cited alternative applications include using on-blockchain digital assets to represent custom financial instruments, ownership of an underlying physical device, non-fungible assets and more complex applications involving digital assets being directly controlled by a piece of code implementing arbitrary rules (smart contracts) or even blockchain-based decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs)."

https://ethereum.org/en/whitepaper/