No one is more aware of the centralization risk than Bitcoin Core developers themselves. The project as a whole takes regular actions to distribute and minimize this risk and has been doing so ever since Satoshi vanished.

Lead maintainer Wladimir van der Laan retired recently[^1]. They are not replacing him with a new "lead maintainer", instead opting to operate in a leaderless fashion going forward. Pieter Wuille has also distanced himself from the perception that he is a leader among Bitcoin Core developers, going so far as to remove himself as a maintainer.[^2] Even in the realm of release signing the Bitcoin Core project has moved in a direction of greater decentralization, removing the static list of release signers in favor of a rotating cast of characters[^3].

Accusing "Bitcoin Core" of being a centralized group is a bit of a reach, in my opinion. Several contributors come to mind as contentious figures who rub a lot of other contributors the wrong way. I will not name them but ask anyone who follows Bitcoin Core and they can certainly corroborate this characterization. These figures are not ostracized or excluded from contributing to the protocol or mailing list, their contributions are merged and help to make bitcoin stronger, just as all contributors do.

I think there are many more and far larger threats to bitcoin than the developers. Between frivolous lawsuits, hostile legal regimes, and regulatory protocol capture I don't ever lose sleep that the developers themselves will materially harm the project.

[^1] https://twitter.com/WuBlockchain/status/1626468462972502016 [^2] https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/25568 [^3] https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/a/110517