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- ShapeShift has taken it to Medium in a blog post to myths surrounding the cryptocurrency world, including one from Twitter user @holdonaut that says that Ethereum is centralized.
- Ethereum itself has faced no issues with attacks due to centralization in 5 years of the blockchain’s uptime and the popular.
- Cryptocurrency projects are all driven by financial gain, and nothing can be as pure as Bitcoin.
Kent Barton, Head of R&D at Switzerland-based cryptocurrency exchange ShapeShift, has taken it to Medium in a blog post to myths surrounding the cryptocurrency world, including one from Twitter user @holdonaut that says that Ethereum is centralized.
Ethereum is the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization with a large community backing, and yet Bitcoin maximalists make claims that the cryptocurrency is centralized, and this is the main question that Barton tackles in the post.
Barton begins by speaking of the definition of a centralized blockchain stating that it could easily be captured by governments or corporations or be manipulated or controlled by its developers.
He then goes on to say that people have made claims that Ethereum’s nodes centralized as it has a lesser node population and takes longer synchronization times.
Barton clarifies this by saying that there there are about 7500 ether nodes across the globe and says that the node count of a blockchain is not a direct indication of its governing body.
Ethereum itself has faced no issues with attacks due to centralization in 5 years of the blockchain’s uptime and the popular. Bitcoin had performed quite well too when its node count lay in the same region as Ethereum. Sync times of Ethereum have also been improving over the past year with multiple improvements made to Geth.
A smart point that Barton has made regarding the centralization of Ethereum nodes has been that 60% of Ethereum nodes are hosted on Amazon’s AWS. Therefore there is an indirect centralization of Ethereum with Amazon.
This could prove risky for the blockchain if Amazon decides to make unethical decisions or even completely shut down AWS. Although this is highly unlikely, is it the closest that Ethereum is to a centralization of power.
Some of the other myths from @hodlonaut that Barton clarifies include: Vitalik Buterin and the Ethereum Foundation have agreements that allow control over the Ethereum network, the inherent unfairness of the Ethereum crowd-sale and all events that happen on Ethereum are vulnerable to centralization.
Cryptocurrency projects are all driven by financial gain, and nothing can be as pure as Bitcoin. New cryptocurrency projects are all showered with partnerships from bad actors and alphabet agencies.
Ethereum doesn’t have a real userbase and is used for ICO scams, and finally, to round it all up, Ethereum is a scam. Barton goes into plenty of detail into clarifying these myths and also providing evidence as to why some of these myths could’ve popped up.
