Yeah, any time you need either an index or a caching layer you have to re-centralize one way or another. But decoupling those "services" from the data storage itself helps, and credible exit makes the gatekeepers far less powerful. An example: a few weeks ago nostr.band, one of nostr's main indexers/search services went away. Search is still somewhat impacted (evidence that we were centralized around it), but indexing (i.e. finding users' relay lists) is still covered by several other services.