Vertcoin is specifically designed to be decentralized, with mining being conducted by its users rather than mining conglomerates.
It does so with an ASIC-resistant design. It is not the first coin to attempt this, but it could be one of the most successful to do so.
Unlike other currencies, Vertcoin has introduced an adaptive mining algorithm, which can be updated to stay one step ahead of ASIC miners.
The same algorithm also provides an additional advantage to GPU mining, in order to actively incentivize users to mine with their computers from home.