Clarifying the antecedent of "they" (Section 3.1.2)

[mferguson-rpc]

In the second paragraph of the section, it is unclear what "they" is referring to in the last sentence. Is this the "techniques" mentioned in the first sentence of that paragraph? The participants? Please advise.

Original: They typically guarantee proper performance of a function using cryptographic techniques (often, an append-only transaction ledger).

[mnot]

I think this could be addressed by rearranging the paragraph; e.g.,

These techniques typically guarantee proper performance of a function using cryptographic techniques (often, an append-only transaction ledger). They attempt to avoid centralization by distributing the operation of a function to members of a sometimes large pool of protocol participants. Usually, the participants are unknown and untrusted, and a particular task's assignment to a node for handling cannot be predicted or controlled.