It's not gate-kept, it's just that it's not easy to run your own node and synchronize to the chain (especially if you're on mobile) so people don't do it and instead decide to trust public nodes.

It's the early days, remember how long the internet worked with http:// ? It's only in 2009 I believe that Facebook switched to https://

Check my other comment to see that the future doesn't look that bad: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29847881