If you want any system to connect to you, you need to open a port. You don’t need to do that for outgoing connections (the OS and your router will automatically open ports for the return connection). So if everybody connects to one central system, nobody needs to (explicitly) open any ports (except for the central connection point)
There is a famous experiment , where a person gets 100$, and have to offer an arbitrary percentage of that to a stranger. If the stranger declines, both get nothing.
From the strangers perspective, getting offered even 1$ is a win, but the vast majority rejected anything below 30%