Prior to The Merge, Ethereum used to have dozens upon dozens of mining pools dedicating hashrate toward the blockchain network. That has all changed and most of the miners transitioned or plan on transitioning to other Ethash compatible coins like ethereum classic, ERGO, and the new fork ETHW. Now Ethereum blocks are verified by validators and at the time of writing, there are 429,278 validators. However, a great deal of the 13.7 million staked ethereum is held by four known providers.
4 Known Providers Hold 59% of the Staked Ethereum Today
Bitcoin.com נייַעס געמאלדן on Lido possessing 30% of the staked ether four days ago. On September 15, the Twitter account טשעקקמאַטע, the lead onchain analyst at גלאַסנאָדע, wrote about the entities currently holding the lion’s share of today’s staked עטה. “We profiled a few more entities,” Checkmate געשריבן to someone discussing Lido’s holdings. Checkmate said data shows that there’s 13.7 million staked עטה and 10 million ether is held by known providers. That equates to 73% of the staked עטה, and the top four providers hold 8.13 million עטה or 59.3% of the aggregate.
“4.17M in Lido, 1.92M in Coinbase, 1.14M in Kraken, [and] 0.9M in Binance,” Checkmate said. The tweet shared by the onchain analyst at Glassnode was further discussed by the popular bitcoiner Tuur Demeester, the editor at satoshipapers.org. “44% of עטה is staked by just 2 entities, Lido [and] Coinbase. Add Kraken, and it jumps to 52% of total עטה staked by 3 entities,” Demeester געשריבן. The editor also mocked a tweet written by Vitalik Buterin which talks about the idea of having average users validate the system.
SEC Chair Gensler Hints at Taking Another Look at Staking Coins, Jack Dorsey Shares Anti-PoS Editorial, Ethereum Proponents Believe People Are Getting Ahead of Themselves
In addition to bitcoiners like Demeester and Checkmate, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission chair, Gary Gensler, recently talked about talking about the Howey test and staking coins. The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) געמאלדן that Gensler said: “From the coin’s perspective … that’s another indicia that under the Howey test, the investing public is anticipating profits based on the efforts of others.” While the WSJ said Gensler remarked that he wasn’t referring to any cryptocurrency in particular, many crypto enthusiasts assumed the SEC chair was discussing ethereum (עטה) and PoS coins.
BREAKING: Gary Gensler says using of Proof-of-Stake could trigger securities laws.
- Dennis Porter (@Dennis_Porter_) סעפטעמבער קסנומקס, קסנומקס
In mid-August, Coinbase co-founder and CEO Brian Armstrong was asked if the exchange would censor at the ethereum protocol level with validators. “If regulators ask you to censor at the ethereum protocol level with your validators will you: (A) Comply and censor at [the] protocol level (B) Shut down the staking service and preserve network integrity,” the user asked.
אַרמסטראָנג אפגערופן three days later and said: “It’s a hypothetical we hopefully won’t actually face. But if we did we’d go with (B), I think. Got to focus on the bigger picture. There may be some better option (C) or a legal challenge as well that could help reach a better outcome.”
A number of people believe that it’s quite possible that known validators could be forced to comply with regulatory policy and censorship. With four centralized entities staking the most ethereum (עטה) today, people have concerns about whether or not validators will be centralized and censor transactions. On September 14, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey שערד an לייט published on substack.com that criticizes PoS. The substack.com article is written by Scott Sullivan and it claims that “to be a validator is to live every day walking on [eggshells]” and “PoS is a permissioned system.”
Meanwhile, most of the criticism stems from bitcoiners, some of whom are labeled as bitcoin maximalists. Ethereum proponents think the idea is absurd and one supporter noted that he would simply jump to an עטה chain that doesn’t censor transactions. “Guys,” Ryan Adams tweeted, “[the U.S. government] isn’t trying to censor [ethereum] validators right now. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. But … if they ever do … I’ll be on the fork of Ethereum that doesn’t censor transactions. Simple as that. Layer 0 is our security layer,” Adams added.
Bitcoin supporter and בלאָגגער, Eric Wall, ארויס a Twitter thread on September 16 that details in the case of Lido staking, “Lido isn’t even a pool.” Wall further remarks in his thread that “Lido can’t decide what blocks anyone of their underlying node operators mine.” Wall does ויסזאָגן that he’s an LDO investor, as lido dao (LDO) is the native governance token for the לידאָ פינאַנסע פּרויעקט.
“Lido also can’t fire any of their node operators or remove stake from them as it currently stands. Not more than 13.1% of Lido validators are based in a single country. The geographic distribution here is actually quite impressive,” Wall’s Twitter thread adds.
What do you think about the criticism against Ethereum and the validators censoring transactions? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.
בילד קרעדיץ: Shutterstock, Pixabay, Wiki Commons, Banteg, Alex Svanevik, Checkmate, Twitter,
אָפּלייקענונג: דער אַרטיקל איז בלויז פֿאַר ינפאָרמיישאַנאַל צוועקן. עס איז נישט אַ דירעקט פאָרשלאָג אָדער סאַליסיטיישאַן פון אַ פאָרשלאָג צו קויפן אָדער פאַרקויפן, אָדער אַ רעקאָממענדאַטיאָן אָדער ענדאָרסמאַנט פון פּראָדוקטן, באַדינונגען אָדער קאָמפּאַניעס. Bitcoin.com גיט ניט ינוועסמאַנט, שטייער, לעגאַל אָדער אַקאַונטינג עצה. ניט די פירמע אדער דער מחבר זענען פאַראַנטוואָרטלעך, גלייַך אָדער מינאַצאַד, פֿאַר קיין שעדיקן אָדער אָנווער געפֿירט אָדער אַלעדזשאַד צו זיין געפֿירט דורך אָדער אין קשר מיט די נוצן פון אָדער צוטרוי אויף קיין אינהאַלט, סכוירע אָדער באַדינונגען דערמאנט אין דעם אַרטיקל.
Source: https://news.bitcoin.com/proof-of-work-proponents-question-validator-censorship-as-59-of-staked-ethereum-is-held-by-4-companies/