> The whole concept of "verification" is bound to centralized structures, it should be buried.

It doesn't have to be. There can be multiple verifiers and a single pubkey can be verified by many of them. If among the verifiers that verify me there is at least one which is included in your trusted list, your client should show me as verified.
This would be a level of decentralization similar to that of relays (in the inbox model).

The issue with NIP-05, if it were a verification system (it's not), would be that an account can only be "verified" by one "verifier". So an account would have to pick just one and you'd be forced to "trust" any widely used one (if you want to rely on verification at all), leading to centralization.