So actually what we, as a society, have, is not considered a democracy, but instead is a constitutional republic (although some countries don’t have constitutions). Besides that, we have essentially dictatorships, or in-between states. We do not have any direct democracies, which I think could be a good compromise between a stateless society and a centralized society. Here’s my idea for how a modern, direct democratic society could run:

We have the internet and technologies like blockchain that can securely and verifiably store data that we could use as a voting system with fast elections. I know blockchain is kind of a toxic term with all of the scams that have been happening, but what I’m describing has nothing to do with anything that has financial value, and cannot be transfered/sold/exchanged between people.

1. Each “wallet” will expire after an election.
2. Each “wallet” is assigned via government ID number; each “wallet” is given a certain number of vote counts, but in different tokens (one for each vote). One person gets only one “wallet”.
3. “Crypto-votes” can only be transferred to one “wallet” address (owned by the government doing the election).
4. The option to vote in person will still exist.
5. The sender will always remain private, due to the need for anonymous voting (this can be done the same way Monero hides transactions, which is via ring signatures), but the sendee must be public, so that if there’s an exploit that allows sending votes to another “wallet” or double voting, that can be traced on the public blockchain, along with being able to trust the voting system due to being able to count the vote yourself.
6. The voting system must be entirely open source and licensed to be able to publicly audit and modify the code, so that improvements could be made by whoever can.
7. The government receiving “wallet” will be publically available to look at in the blockchain.
8. Each government will have their own blockchain (kind of obvious, but thought I’d state it anyway)
9. Some kind of ranked voting, STAR, or whatever the most mathematically proven voting system is.
10. I like how the US has a constitution that is amendable, but is difficult to change. The Bill of Rights, for example, gives people rights that cannot be taken away, even by passed laws that attempt to override it. Of course, right now, that requires a supreme court, and historically supreme courts with power to rule things unconstitutional have used that power to be oligarchs. I’m not too sure how to fix this issue.
11. There is also the issue of voter fatigue, which is where the idea for a republic came from to begin with. I personally think that it’s worth the tradeoff to have the people have more direct power. Not everyone is going to vote all the time, but people who want their voices heard can have themselves heard. There will also be the option to abstain from votes.
12. We also need to find a way to solve the energy consumption issue with crypto. There have been other proofing methods introduced, such as using disk storage space instead of computationally intensive reverse-hashing workloads, like with Chia, using what they call Proof of Space Time.
13. If the internet/electricity/whatever fails, there will be a paper fallback with copies of the ballots available upon request (copies could be made with a battery powered printer and computer if needed). Each ballot will be scanned into the same battery powered computer upon casting. Each ballot will be both counted by a computer and by a human/team of humans.

This could essentially replace the Parliamentary system, or the US Congressional system, which giving people more direct power over their government.

There would still be a need for an executive branch (in US terminology), where there’s a state leader, along with their cabinet (again, US terms) of agency leaders, all individually voted for. I believe this would provide the centralized “power” that you described.

Also on the economic model that doesn’t allow for exploitation, I like Richard Wolff’s idea of forcing all businesses (above, say 100 employees) to be worker-owned co-ops. In Prof. Wolff’s terms, it will bring democracy to the workplace.