I don't think anyone can tell where we're going. Mastodon.social was the largest instance by far for some time, then at the deluge, it splintered.

Part of the reason for Mastodon to fracture is specialization - each instance does something unique. Maybe Lemmy will do the same, maybe not.

But if we end up with 3 primary instances, it's still decentralized - I think the most useful feature of Lemmy isn't that we're spread out, it's that we could be.

I think this highlights a very good point. It's totally ok for everything to gravitate to a central instance as long as that instance is run in a way that everyone is happy with. The key is the the moment something changes and users aren't happy, the decentralised nature of Lemmy gives those users an exit strategy - a way to replace the bad instance and carry on.

If a single Lemmy instance becomes the new Reddit and then pulls a move that angers the community the way Reddit has recently, users wouldn't be reduced to protests and hoping that management listen, they could just spin up new instances, mirror the content, and carry on like nothing happened.