Bitcoin, Ethereum Need Just 3 Entities to Influence Block Production; Solana Needs 19
Summary
- Glassnode said Bitcoin and Ethereum each require three entities to influence block production, while Solana needs 19 entities.
- The report said the large share held by some mining pools or validators should not be equated with network control because they do not directly own participants' computing power or stake.
- It also said Bitcoin relies heavily on Tor, Ethereum on cloud services (AWS) and Solana on data centers, and that decentralization should be assessed alongside the degree of infrastructure distribution.
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Bitcoin and Ethereum each need just three entities to reach a level at which they could influence block production, according to a joint study by Glassnode and Ark Invest.
In the report published on September 1, Glassnode and Ark Invest analyzed the degree of decentralization across major blockchains including Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana.
The study found that Bitcoin and Ethereum each require three entities to amass enough computing power or stake to influence block production. Solana, by contrast, would require 19 entities to reach the same threshold.
The report said those figures should not be treated as equivalent to actual control over a network. In Bitcoin, multiple miners contribute computing power to a single mining pool. In proof-of-stake networks such as Ethereum and Solana, many users delegate assets to validators.
That means even if a specific mining pool or validator accounts for a large share, the operator does not necessarily directly own all of the participants' computing power or stake.
The report also found differences in how widely each blockchain's infrastructure is distributed. Bitcoin's nodes were relatively evenly spread geographically, and about 63% of all nodes operated through Tor, the anonymous communications network.
Ethereum showed relatively high dependence on cloud services, with about 20% of all nodes running on Amazon Web Services. Solana was found to run a substantial portion of its network infrastructure through data centers.
The report said assessments of blockchain decentralization should take into account not only the number of entities involved in block production, but also mining-pool and staking-delegation structures, the geographic distribution of nodes and how infrastructure is operated.
