Ethereum
Vitalik Buterin criticizes Ethereum’s decentralization compared to Bitcoin
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin provided a detailed analysis of decentralization in Ethereum compared to Bitcoin and other networks. The issue of centralized mining and staking in blockchains remains controversial, as analysts see models moving away from the core. Buterin also addressed the debates surrounding mainnet and layer 2 solutions.
Vitalik Buterin Praises Decentralization on Ethereum
He pointed out that Ethereum is in a better position than Bitcoin in terms of robustness and decentralization. Speaking at ETHCC in Brussels, Vitalik Buterin noted that two mining pools account for 50% of Bitcoin’s computing power while four account for 75%. Drawing lines with Ethereum, he said that much of it is unidentified, meaning it is operated by a group of independent individuals or stakers.
He added that the Lido part includes 37 different validators, which makes the overall system largely decentralized. This generally attracts benefits such as a multi-client ecosystem, different users across jurisdictions, and a multi-centric knowledge ecosystem.
“There are Geth execution clients and non-Geth execution clients, and the proportion of non-Geth execution clients exceeds that of Geth execution clients. A similar situation also occurs in the consensus client system.
Ethereum has moved to a proof of stake consensus model after the long-awaited merge. This essentially swapped miners with stakers reducing its energy consumption. However, while this method was supposed to help the network, claims of centralization were hammered home by critics due to the 32
ETH reference.
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Validators and threshold: a compromise
Vitalik Buterin highlighted the hurdle of the 32 ETH staking threshold, explaining the trade-off for lower fees. Today, the network has about 1 million validators and if the minimum threshold were to drop to 4 ETH, the network would have about 8 million validators, increasing the trade-off.
“So it’s a tradeoff. Ethereum has always tried to be somewhere in the middle of that tradeoff. But if we can find a way to improve it, then we’ll have extra stat points that we can choose to spend on lowering the minimum requirements or making it easier to run a node.
In a related development, the Ethereum co-founder described blockchains as truth machines providing the same via messages.
A blockchain is a “truth machine” in the precise sense that it provides a consensus approximate truth about when messages were sent. It doesn’t tell you “was the moon landing real?”
This significantly reduces the attack surface of the blockchain, but it means we need other tools to…
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) July 20, 2024
At the time of going to press, ETH Price is trading at $3,492, up more than 2% in the past 24 hours. Trading volume has been flat over the past day as the market prepares for the launch of the Ethereum spot ETF next week.
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