Federated does mean that the network overall does not rely on a specific node.
There is no true Mastodon instance, mastodon.social is merely the biggest. I run my own mastodon instance and can federate just fine.
Federation is distributed to some extend. However, unlike pure p2p where everyone has a node, it's more like little towns and cities where people live together voluntarily. Each one is a different size, each has it's own rules and if people don't like the rules, they can leave and go elsewhere.
There is no true Mastodon instance, mastodon.social is merely the biggest. I run my own mastodon instance and can federate just fine.
Federation is distributed to some extend. However, unlike pure p2p where everyone has a node, it's more like little towns and cities where people live together voluntarily. Each one is a different size, each has it's own rules and if people don't like the rules, they can leave and go elsewhere.