Data from Santiment disclosed only two addresses contributed to over 45% of Ethereum’s PoS nodes, giving rise to concerns of centralization.
Following The Merge, Ethereum no longer relies on mining for network security and instead requires validators to stake their ETH tokens on the network to validate transactions and gain rewards.
A few hours after the landmark update went live, data from Santiment revealed that only two addresses were responsible for 46.15% of these staking nodes.
Santiment's tweet claimed that the first address contributed to 28.97% of Proof-of-Stake nodes and has validated 188 blocks, with the second one representing 16.18% of the nodes, having validated 105 blocks. The market analysis firm noted that the heavy dominance of the two addresses over the PoS nodes is “something to watch” as it increases the risk of centralization.
However, a Twitter user countered Santiment’s statement by stating that the addresses may be flash bot relays that consist of several validators instead of just one person, with the relayer appearing a "single proposer of blocks" on the Ethereum network.
Moreover, Martin Köppelmann, Co-Founder of Gnosis, tweeted that two wallets belonged to staking platform Lido and crypto exchange Coinbase, with the firms controlling 27.50% and 14.50% of the stake respectively. He also claimed the fact that the top seven firms hold 67.5% of the stake was “disappointing.”
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