I know I am a bit late to the topic, however the censorship surrounding Tornado Cash got me thinking...
In what other ways, potentially larger ways, could ETH be censored in the future and how?
The results were quite staggering... π§΅ππΌ
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The main topic of this thread is surrounding the centralization of Ethereum Nodes, specifically the servers they are being hosted on.
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Note: I will not be going into all of the technicalities as to what constitutes a "decentralization." That not only justifies its own thread, but also, I am very likely to leave something out and get rekt in the comments.
So for now, I will stick to a narrower scope.
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Eth maxis pride themselves on the decentralization of their network, and rightfully so:
According to Etherscan, there are roughly 4550 nodes operating on mainnet globally (10396 total) and such, the network is very robust.
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Below is a graphical representation of the node distribution globally, provided by Etherscan:
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Although there are many nodes operating across the globe, how many of them rely on centralized servers?
Lets dive inππΌ
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The following stats are from ethernodes.org:
Of the nodes operating on mainnet, 2849, or 62.6%, are hosted.
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An even more staggering statistic is that of the hosted nodes, 52.5% of nodes operate on AWS with 17% of them out of a single data center in Ashburn, VA.
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Additionally, 34.7% of nodes are operating in residential settings. Of the residental nodes, over 50% are operating through just a few Us-Internet providers such as Comcast, Verizon Spectrum and AT&T.
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Therefore, the data provided above shows that of all of the Ethereum nodes on mainnet, nearly 50% are facilitated by Amazon, Comcast, Verizon, AT&T and Spectrum, which conveniently enough corresponds with the Etherscan stat of ~49% of Eths US network distribution.
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I should remind everyone that although a 51% attack isn't enough to take absolute control of the network, it could still have massive repercussions through reverting transaction/double spending.
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Conveniently enough, Amazon also launched a node-as-a-service platform on Amazon Managed Blockchain which allows node activation for ETH in a few simple steps.
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"But what about The Merge? Won't POS save us from a crushing blow from Uncle Jeff?"
Although the transition to Proof of Stake will improve decentralization, it is not the saving grace many hope for...
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Of the current validators running on ETHs Becon Chain, more than 50% of all staked ETH is contained to three pools by (you guessed it!): the centralized servers of Coinbase, Lido and Kraken.
There is a similar inherent risk to this distribution of staked ETH.
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This is highly concerning for the decentralized narrative of Ethereum's network and appears to be overlooked by many.
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We saw how easily the US Government was able to shut down Tornado, a simple dApp operating on ETH, slapping severe enough OFAC sanctions to prevent its use entirely.
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What does everyone think will happen if the US decides to try to gain more control over ETH validators/nodes through threats and legislation?
We already know where Coinbase stands on this issue:
twitter.com/brian_armstrong/status/1558941361465749504?s=20&t=zwKfgneMU9Eiic5kCDHgZQ
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My point is: a blockchain is only ever as decentralized as the nations that govern their validators.
The classic tale of big fucks small. Centralized Power will always trump Decentralized Technology.
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Marbius π»
@MarbiusC
Spend most of my time researching. What I share is free and worth every penny. Unrolled threads in linkππΌ
