Frederick Munawa is a Canadian crypto journalist who writes about different issues related to finance and law in this field. Educated at the University of Toronto and SIU, with a BSc., an MBA, and a GPLLM, he approaches the blockchain with a bit of skepticism, but without discarding it completely.
He’s been decoding crypto’s big claims since last year, its messy trade-offs, and its occasional miracles. During his tenure as a crypto-specialist journalist, he has been repeating the same question: Who actually controls this thing?
Question. Quick intro: Who is Frederick Munawa in one line?
Frederick Munawa: I’m a finance and law nerd that, with time, ended up as a crypto journalist because… why not?
Q. How did you jump from finance and law into crypto reporting?
F.M. I followed the incentives. Crypto kept colliding with market structure, securities analysis, and regulatory theory, fields I’d already known. The more I read white papers about them, the more I saw gaps between stated decentralization and operational reality. And, even though journalism was a bit far away from my specialty, it is the best role to make the proper questions about those gaps in public. So, I packed everything I had studied and became a reporter.
Q. When did you start covering the space professionally?
F.M. 2024. It was a busy year, zero regrets whatsoever.
Q. What’s your elevator pitch on “decentralization”?
F.M. Decentralization isn’t a vibe; it’s a verifiable distribution of power across time. You can measure it by who can censor transactions, who can make upgrades, where the cash flows and keys reside, and how easily outsiders can become insiders. It’s dynamic, not binary, as systems can decentralize or recentralize if needed. So, users must expect a spectrum of decentralization; it’s not black or white, there are a lot of greys in between.
Q. Biggest misconception you keep seeing?
F.M. That “blockchain” means “decentralized.” It’s not that easy.
Q. Where do centralization risks usually hide?
F.M. In the human shortcuts. Admin keys with god-mode upgrades; token distributions that cater a few whales; validator sets concentrated in two hosting providers; governance forums where the loudest bags win; and off-chain dependencies. UX teams often centralize to “ship fast”, and then struggle to unwind those choices later.
Q. Your quick sniff test for a project’s power map?
F.M. Token/validator concentration, upgradability policies, and off-chain choke points.
Q. From your legal lens, where is crypto regulation heading?
F.M. Toward functionality over labels. Regulators are learning to separate bearer-instrument money from tokenized equity risk and from database-on-the-internet theater. The trend is risk-tiering, with stablecoins in one bucket, DeFi protocols in another, and custody and disclosures in a third. Clearer rules will reward teams that document governance and minimize unilateral control from day one.
Q. How would you sum up your thoughts?
F.M. Not everything that glitters in blockchain is decentralization. Decentralization has become a buzzword around blockchain, even though, as I said before, not every blockchain is decentralized, and it’s impossible to have a fully decentralized blockchain, as there is someone (or something) controlling it.
Q. Are Layer 2s decentralized today?
F.M. Let’s say there are many “in progress”; but only a few of them are there nowadays.
Q. What should ordinary users look at before trusting an L2?
F.M. The first thing any user should do is read the security model, check if there is a centralized sequencer, and who can trigger emergency withdrawals. Moreover, it’s crucial to know how long the fraud/validity windows are and how often the proofs are posted on L1. And then, if an upgrade council can flip switches without broad consent, as you would be trading custody risk for governance risk. In that case, you should know which risk you prefer.
Q. What quiet dependencies worry you most?
F.M. Infrastructure monocultures. If most validators depend on a couple of cloud providers, censorship and outages are a real problem. Add MEV dynamics, liquidity on a few venues, and oracle networks tied to a narrow set of signers, and you’ve reintroduced a lot of points of failure, just with better branding for some.
Q. As a new crypto reporter, do you have any advice for other newcomers?
F.M. Learn accounting, a lot of theory, and how to read smart-contract diffs. And it might sound like a cheap trick coming from me, but regulation is a must.
Q. Any tools or sources they should use?
F.M. Block explorers, GitHub commits, governance forums, audit notes, and court filings. Again, the last one is a bit easy coming from me, but you learn a lot from them, and of course, it’s extra information about the legal status of cryptos.
Q. Bitcoin, Ethereum, and stablecoins: how do you frame them?
F.M. They are different beasts. Bitcoin aims for settlement finality and monetary credibility. In the meantime, Ethereum tries to optimize for programmability and expressive markets, and stablecoins are the bridge that are paying the bills. Each has distinct decentralization pressures, and each needs different guardrails.
Q. What’s next for you as a journalist in 2025?
F.M. More power-mapping. I want to profile protocols through the lens of “who can stop whom,” track decentralization trajectories over time, and spotlight builders proving you can ship while minimizing unilateral control. If readers come away asking better questions about control and exit rights, I’ve done my job.
