If there's a central party to pay to, I'm not so convinced it's decentralized. It instantly makes me think it's only using "decentralized" as a buzz word.
Good point, how come only you (in this thread) think about it?
Many people love buzz words and instantly believe it. For me, buzz words are like alarm bells by now.
I'd love to see a decentralized messenger though. I can imagine a P2P system where you only store the (encrypted) messages for all your contacts, maybe just for 30 days. This makes the amount of data manageable, while still providing redundancy.
But it instantly introduces the next problem: P2P requires direct connections, so sharing your IP with all contacts. I wouldn't like that.