Bitcoin Forum

It seems the major concern about Proof of stake that experts here warned about has begin to see the light.
According to cointelegraph, 40% of ethereum nodes are controlled by two addresses which are Lido and Coinbase.
This has just proven more that POS is not decentralized and favours investors with higher token supply
source (https://cointelegraph.com/news/40-ethereum-pos-nodes-are-controlled-by-two-addresses-says-santiment-data)

And those two addresses if their stake their ethereum in the network pool then there can control the transaction, that is the irony of the whole situation, the proof of stake network will only make ethereum more centralized and control is given to the big bag holders in the network.

We will see more of these kinds of addresses that are contending to control the network popping up as time goes on because coinbase is an exchange so other big exchanges like Binance will join the list of ethereum holders competing for control of the network pool.

PoS is based on the amount you hold. If we simply evaluate this, I think we are safe to say it's a method to make rich people more rich as they will have more power with their holdings. This makes the system more centralized. People with heavy investment can easily have the control of the chain.

Your discussion would better fit in altcoin discussion since it's all about altcoin discussion here.

Bitcoin's pool data looks quite interesting (a lot of mining is done by miners that are hard for them to identify):
https://www.blockchain.com/pools

I think more about ethereum being pos and more centralised because of it will come out too (especially because of how much needs to be staked to get a reward and how larger players in the crypto industry will do better at obtaining and keeping these amounts).

I'd imagine exchanges go up to holding about 60-70% of coins if we include binance but then mining has done similar by only two pools in tha past (although people can switch pools faster than they can switch staking company - if they can even switch staking company).

I think eth was safer letting a pos coin overtake them rather than being that coin. But I guess it's open source - perhaps a rival chain can come out.

Its worth to add that coinbase and many more big pools can be controlled by US government. Such as large investment funds that allow you to invest in ETH. So sooner or later ETH might become centralized and controlled by US government. My bet is that the bigger winner of eth merge is bitcoin

Everything favours investors with high token states, we already know few things to consider when we are trading even in Bitcoins, you have to understand the fact that the price is dependent on demand and supply, which also means that people who do hold major value can create a low demand by selling the bitcoins and then increasing the supply transiently, thus I do think that it's not just extended to ETH or its nodes, it's everywhere, but at the end of the day, it favours the whales ofc, but they are the ones who loose loads as well if something wrong happens, this is something that we have to somehow solve. Whales or not they should not have the power to control the market.

I can't say that POS is fully centralized because there are still more than one validators that may have different views.  POS may be inclined to centralization but I don't think it is created as that.  POS favors people who are staking huge amounts of tokens but doesn't POW has the same concept?  Those who have higher hashes have the say when consensus happens.  It is that in POS it is easier for the developers and whales to control the decisions because developers had initially owned the whole pre-mine until the coins is distributed.

Most cryptocurrency isn't truly decentralized except Bitcoin. So no matter whether it's PoS or PoW. We need to save gas fees. I don't like too high gas fees to control my tokens. I disagree with OP, we can't all it fully centralized just for PoS, but it's not truly decentralized which hasn't ever. So nothing new to be honest.

40% of nodes controlled by only 2 addresses? other than decentralization means that all the most important decisions will pass only by the will of a few, however, we already knew

POS being centralized were known already even with few coins before this merge. The excitement was just too much, the holder were very happy thinking this will really explode the day of merge. I can feel the disappointment.

Why the hype of ETH merge reached over to the mainstream media seem surprising,its an early celebration for Lido,  Coinbase and their friends to finally get a hold of everyone's ERC tokens.

Many knows this already even before the hype of merging with ETH. POS is not fully decentralized not because of the ownership of big investors but also with their system. Well, this can happen to any network as long as they have the money to invest then probably they can control the price movement. Though if you are looking in the whole picture, this can still be a good update regardless if its centralized or not, the purpose of merge is very clear and we might see its effect in the coming months.

Well, that's to be expected.

POS is POS and it isn't secured as POW. While it's already in POS, the huge addresses and players are the ones that will dominate on this matter. And we're like being held by them since they've got a huge share of the network.

We can't do anything from there and let's see on how each of the close ones to them try to achieve where they are.

It is been known that Proof of Stake has been lack of decentralization mechanism, by design. It's not surprising that such a system produce that kind of output, even their community itself mostly just simply doesn't care about it. So indeed it is expected, the question should rather be how much centralization they are willing to get through. In another hand, measuring centralization doesn't solely able to be perceived using a consensus mechanism, rather there are many factors to see about, a cryptocurrency could still be using PoW but centralized in specific aspects.

The transition from POW to POS is a big thing in cryptocurrency. Now this will slowly have its characteristic changes. The major one being the market getting turned to be centralized. When a huge volume is within the hands of few big players in the market it is going to be more centralized. This could let the market to be progressive based on the manipulation and real move gets disturbed.

actually in the case of eth

72 million coins for the pre mine

60 million were sold for 3.8 million

12 million were given to the developers for nothing

and 50 million coins were mined

total of 122 million coins

under 20 million are staked.

so a lot can go wrong for the stake coins

Ie who is to say some one simple starts swapping his cheap eth from pre mined wallets for etc

drives eth done and etc up acts as mining support.

a lot o players could do that.

and the staked coins are frozen for months to come.

I would feel very uncomfortable knowing my stake is frozen and millions of pre mined coins are easy to convert to btc or etc or cash.

And people think PoS is still superior to PoW..

Neither of them are the best all around, but the latter is harder to get a huge stake on than the former, and control the whole blockchain at a whim. Sure it may cost a lot of energy to maintain and secure the blockchain, but no approaches or algorithm has been made to put security against centralization at the top except for PoW. Also, I think a lot of people who bought into PoS coins know the risks of centralization and they are just trying to shrug it off since they believe that no foolish moves will be made by those who control a huge number of coins anyway, because it also affects the value of their investment.

It's not a problem if people have money oriented. The More decentralized and controlled the more you got profit. those who are interested to join because they think they can create more money than POW. we just now both are greedy companies.

yeah I know a lot of people are concern about this even in PoW industry you can still pretty much get a 20% or more hash rate in a single mining pool but they are in different company and still made up 40% if they want to change the chain they need at least 51% combine in single pool

We'll just look at that positive thing you've said about the progress.

But there's no other thing that we can think of it when it's already centralized. There's now a control and those huge enterprises who has got a better amount of holding are controlling the network.

The manipulation is always going to be there and people won't have that comfort on it but yeah, the progress through their help is there but it's no longer the same as before like everyone is on a free market.

If that is true, than this is definitely a concerning number in terms of centralizsation and of course power within the Ethereum network. That being said, i am also pretty sure that those huge mining farms in china also had a pretty big share of the whole Ethereum mining power under their control. That is also the reason why those big mining companies where tryping to push that ETHPoW fork now, but so far it seems like that will be not really successful.
In my opinion the switch from PoW to PoS had to happen because otherwise big companies or institutions would be reluctant to use Ethereum as their network for blockchain applications. In the word of today it is a huge bonus if you are a climate friendly project.

The POW system is more efficient and decentralized than the POS. But there is another important point that the Ethereum developer team cannot overlook, which is the energy consumed in the POW far exceeds the POS.

The world's policies tend to reduce energy consumption in general as a necessary step as long as the exploitation of clean energies is not currently sufficient to meet the planet's energy needs. Therefore, many legislations will aim to reduce the current consumption.

We had heard on more than one occasion and in different parts of the world about the possibility of blocking Bitcoin mining activities for the same reasons, especially that Bitcoin is completely decentralized, meaning that the mining system can not be replaced by it except through the agreement of the miners themselves, which is not completely applicable in the example of Ethereum since there is A team of developers is working on updates and changes easier and faster.

Proof of stake is centralized. Being Centralized means that a single point does all of the work involved in any given action. This point is also a single point of failure. On the other hand, decentralization is the opposite, that is, there are many points that divide all the work and no single point of failure. This means that having your crypto asset  in a PoW coin is different from having your cypto asset on PoS coin. In my opinion, I don't consider PoS superior to PoW because of the security issues of centralization as regards PoS. See more on the pros and cons (https://www.coindesk.com/learn/proof-of-work-vs-proof-of-stake-what-is-the-difference/).

Exactly. PoS makes crypto no different than today's ordinary banking system. Effectively, the rich become richer, while the poor, poorer. Such unequal system goes against what crypto/Blockchain tech was created in the first place. With PoS, big exchanges will be able to control the Blockchain with customers' funds. It's like giving the power back to evil corporations subject to governments' rules. It's this reason why Bitcoin is and will always be a PoW cryptocurrency.

Critics may point PoW's energy consumption, but the fact is that no other consensus algorithm matches its level of decentralization and censorship-resistance. With PoW, anyone can mine coins using specialized hardware (either ASICs, FPGAs, or GPUs) spending time and energy in the process. This makes it more accessible than PoS (if I'm not mistaken). Greater accessibility = greater decentralization, right? I feel sorry for ETH and other PoS coins for sacrificing decentralization in favor of high performance and cost-efficiency. They will be taken down by governments easily due to their high concentration of power among a few players. At least, Bitcoin won't be going anywhere. As long as decentralization wins, nothing else matters. Just my thoughts ;D

POS does look more like centralized. that's why I think a lot of people will switch from ETH to ETC. if you want to choose coins that have a POS system then I prefer BNB. but ETH is also good. but would not be a priority for me.
for some reason I prefer the POW system. because in POS we can only stake. and the beneficiaries are the largest holders.

this can happen to any network as long as they have the money to invest then maybe they can control the price movement. When large volumes are in the hands of a few big players in the market, it will be more centralized. This can result in progressive markets based on manipulation and real movement being disrupted, and ultimately the more decentralized and controlled the more profit they get.

The hype generated by the Merge has already leaped out of the window and we are facing another threat from the smiling bears. Personally am a little bit disappointed but as what experts are pointing the Merge and its impact have already been factored in with the price of Eth many days ago. Let's see how this fear that the shift of PoS  is actually making Ethereum more centralized can be affecting its direction and its future. The pressure for Ethereum to go less energy intensive has been the guiding force for this shift for sure...and now they can be pressuring Bitcoin as well.

You have to understand the fact that prices depend on supply and demand. It should be added that the coin base and many more large pools can be controlled with their system. Although if you look at it in its entirety, it could still be a good update regardless of whether it's centralized or not, as the purpose of the merge is pretty self-explanatory and we'll probably see the effect in the coming months.

Sometimes this is just a hypothesis, however, which is justified given the facts. It is not clear how else the fork was initiated other than the pre-existing conditions in the network. I think this could change drastically in the future when Proof-of-Stake (PoS) enters the picture and further decentralizes blockchain control. However, right now and with these numbers, it seems that investors with more tokens have the ability to vote based on their monetary value, while token holders and smaller miners will lose their rights.

Easy money for a centralized exchange too.
They are the bag holders and I want to see how they will spread the profits they will make.
Ethereum is popular and many investors will try to take advantage of the offer of staking. Average retail investors will have no room for profits here, or if it does exist, I doubt it's satisfactory.
This will become the battle of the rich or the war of exchange.  :D So yes, it's centralized.

OP is worrying about the decentralization here. Where Proof-of-stake protocol's main problem is decentralization. I read somewhere before saying, "It's much better to solve the scalability the decentralization".
This centralized issue is became common issue for POS protocol, not only for Ethereum, there are already lot of protocol already that is in POS and they are working fine, this is just a matter of time.

yes, that's right, it looks like ethereum is getting here the "decentralization" feature is very thin. but there are advantages if ethereum has a POS system. such as the low cost of ethereum gas, this is very beneficial for their community with small transactions. Indeed, decentralization is very visible when mining through POW. but POW has many drawbacks, one of which is not environmentally friendly.

Centralization is a side effect of PoS by nature. There’s a reason people hate it so much and there’s an entire PoW industry. Some people don’t care though. They just want to play with a cool toy and smart contracts seem to fit the bill. This sort of change shows that the network is still very far from a finished product.

How do you assume that these same things are not happening with POW as well? I mean even in POW environment, people with higher potential hold major portion of the hash power. In POW, it will be hash power and in POS, it will be in terms of tokens. But, in my understanding, instead of spending thousands of millions of dollars on Asic machines, you should be encouraged to spend the same money on tokens which will ensure your investments will not be enjoyed by third party but people who are in within your ecosystem or simply it will benefit all the holders.

This is the simplest reason why I love POS. Still, I am not aware of level of security and other network based aspects with POS. POW is a proven secured way for protecting against all types of vulnerabilities but I believe POS also will get enhanced to serve the similar features.

ethereum just merged a few days I think it's too soon to conclude this is centralized. No one knows in the future, maybe the POS done by ethereum will be different from the others. I believe it. So far, crypto always gives surprises, ethereum which is a big project of course will not be separated from its surprises in the future.

It's is centralized, ethereum is running on infura and infura is centralized, it seems vitalik has this in mind right from the beginning, this is why I said vitalik is untruthful, he pretend to always be in support of decentralisation and on the long run he has centralised plan in mind.

I would too, especially after I suffered it firsthand when all my staked tokens on the kclp site disappeared as the staking site inappropriately shutdown in a fraudulent manner. It saddens my heart each time I think about it and I'm cocksure those who are looking at ETH may likely have certain level of skepticism based on the frozen thing.

You can see this with other project, POS is slowly becoming a centralized network but I think it’s still fine to many since many will still adopt especially now that ETH is already on POS network. Yes, the update happened a week ago and there’s still a lot of improvements needed before we see the pump, for now let’s see if ETH will become more effective under POS and due to the market situation, let’s not expect that much that the price will pump, ETH still depend on the Bitcoin trend.

I don't think there's a problem with that, because there are indeed most holders on exchanges like Binance, or Coinbase,
so that means it's not a big problem, there are a lot of users on the exchange so maybe it's the Holder on that exchange

Literally POS is not centralized but prone for exploitation. When ETH converted to POS, the giant and most powerful companies in the world can accumulate up to the point that they can hold influence in the network. On the other hand, the same companies and powerful corporations can also invest mining rigs if in case ETH remained at POW. Anyhow, POS is the easier to centralize than POW. Either ETHW or ETC or maybe both can gain more supporters in the coming months and years if they can manage to stay alive.     

You have to understand that nothing is 100% perfect. For those who do not care about decentralization, POS will be good for them because POS will help reduce gas fees to a lower level, transactions become faster. For those who value decentralization, they will certainly not like this.
How will POS affect ETH, we can't say at this point, we have to wait a bit longer how ETH will perform.
Switching to POS is bringing some more trouble for ETH, the SEC is treating it as a security. In addition to the OP's information: 46.15% of Ethereum's PoS nodes are controlled only by Lido and coinbase, the SEC also recently requested control of ETH as over 42.74% of the 7,807 Ethereum nodes are located in the US.
https://cointelegraph.com/news/sec-lawsuit-claims-jurisdiction-as-eth-nodes-are-clustered-in-the-us

that's obviously true if those people didn't even understand nor read all of proposal. There are so many dumb investors in the crypto where they believing with what others said. There would be no upgrade for scalability and that's very well explained in the proposal.
I think that so many cryto investors need to see themselves. they are too lazy to read simple proposal. This is urgent for the crypto investors. that shows if they are really dumb

ETH is now centralized. 46% of ETH belongs to Coinbase and Blackrock.  They can dumpt it whenver they want . Also its handeled by Amazon servers. They can shut it down wheneve they want. This reminds me of the Canadian Cannabis stocks when a new law would pass or license granted. Meant absolutely nothing. Fodder for the sheep.

There is no decentralization in PoS, and never has been. This is a big myth, which is imposed on us by developers of such coins and those who actively promote them in the network. It has been noticed more than once that when some PoS coin votes, 90% of addresses belong to one or several addresses. What kind of decentralization with such distribution of coins and votes can we talk about? ETH became just as centralized after the merger. More than 50% of the network validators are owned by a few large companies.

They can't "dump" it, the money is there but it doesn't belong to them. If they sell all their ETH and then people ask their ETH back, then what? Or if they sell and people sell there as well and there is a financial difference? How are they going to pay for it, out of pockets? What do they gain from it as well? Shorting ETH to make a profit?

I think we need to think this through, and it looks like there is no reason for them to do anything illegal, because if they use others ETH to sell and dump the price, they are located in the USA and SEC would destroy them, not only they will be given a penalty worth tens of millions of dollars, there will be jailed people as well. Doesn't make sense to me at all.

this is the second thread on the forum discussing this topic. Is this from other top coin maximalist. Ethereum is unlimited in mining although other idea now make it deflationary. However, the 40% held by the 2 exchanges are less than 5% of the whole market, so it means the percentage is significantly high to dictate the price and other decision of the coin. This staked portion does not look like it can be moved they can only benefit in the reward

Exactly. PoS is utter centralization at its core. It enriches whales (mainly exchanges, big companies, and wealthy investors), while leaving the little guy out of the system. ETH made a bad decision by pleasing the regulators instead of the community. Now it's going to pay big time as centralized exchanges gain control of all of the network. ETH will now become an easier target for mainstream governments who'd want to censor people's ability to participate in "De-Fi" and gain financial privacy.

Instead of switching to PoS, ETH should've switched to a hybrid consensus mechanism (PoW + PoS) that would help preserve decentralization/censorship-resistance. Now it's ruined, so our only hope lies with Ethereum Classic as the original version of the ETH blockchain. No one knows what the future holds for crypto, so we can only hope for the best. Just my opinion :)

It's really a wonder why Vitalik goes into this roadmap when of all people who has the knowledge of crypto and decentralization, he should have known.  Did he make some deals with SEC? Just wondering.

OP says 40% but I've read it's actually 60% in some chats. It wouldn't be surprising really to see ETH tokens are going to be censored, block,ed or frozen once they see a user supports something that they don't like.

This is something the community has been warning against for a long time, but it seems that the ethereum developers simply do not care about it, now it is true a centralized network will bring benefits which a decentralized network cannot bring.

But without decentralization no coin can exist unless the governments allows it, so if at any point in time governments around the world decide they had enough with ethereum they will be able to destroy it without too much of a problem.

Having to bother about ethereum being controlled by few addresses isn't necessary to me because that's how the entire altcoin in the industry operates. Infact, it's no news that whales are the true determinants of the trends in the market. Even though the industry is said to be decentralized, we know that the decentralisation favours a few as they can control the market. I personally believe that reducing the cost and fees in the ethereum blockchain is more important than the centralization issue because it's been there all along.

PoS does look centralized, but rest assured PoS is also decentralized, it's just that there is only 1 condition,
that is to make an even distribution to holders, usually this is done by Staking, I know Ethereum PoS is currently controlled by Lido and Coinbase,
but if you search furthermore, Coinbase is certainly an exchange, so maybe the address is the result of a pool of addresses on Coinbase

I would say that the U.S. government could now take complete control of the entire ETH network. The first alarm bells are already starting to ring. The head of the SEC says that 44% of validators are located in the United States, which means that most of the validated transactions are American. In addition, the SEC wants to equate ETH to a security rather than a commodity and then the American securities laws will apply to ETH. The American government will block and confiscate any addresses at will and nobody will be able to object. This could kill the whole network, because it would be no better than the normal banking system.

I've read somewhere that the majority of ETH nodes are hosted on Amazon Web Services. That's within US jurisdiction, so it's easy enough to disrupt the ETH blockchain by shutting down the service completely. The SEC already said PoS cryptocurrencies like ETH could be classified as securities, so there would be nothing stopping them from taking action against ETH if exchanges and other industry players don't comply with the law. It's a dangerous situation that could completely undermine ETH as we speak. So much for a decentralized platform for smart contracts aiming to bring "banking to the unbanked".

I don't get why Vitalik and team decided to push the PoS upgrade when they knew about the risks of centralization. It was nothing but a move to enrich themselves and the whales, while leaving the little guy out of the system. The future of PoS cryptocurrencies looks dark, so our only hope lies with Bitcoin as a PoW cryptocurrency that puts decentralization/censorship-resistance above all else. Who knows if 99.9% of the coins switch to PoS while only Bitcoin remains with PoW consensus? Just my thoughts ;D

Currently more and more coins are using PoS. PoW is already becoming a very unpopular and persecuted consensus. Various governments oppose PoW, make various dubious arguments in favor of PoS, even trying to transfer bitcoin to PoS. This trend has been rapidly gaining momentum since last year. If you take the crypto industry 8-10 years ago, there many popular cryptocurrencies were on PoW, and now on PoS. Cryptocurrencies have long been moving toward regulation and centralization.

we are talking about centralized not a good or bad token for investment. I admit when talking about another coin or token better to not invest where a coin comes near to POS or if you have to maybe not all in, half or 50:50. so if you think it's not profitable you can move at all to POW like another fork maybe, ETHPOW.

I don't know why people are always thinking something is much more safer as investment rather than another thing caused by basically how safe the token or coin actually depends on the how developers are developing the token or coin.
I agreed with what you have said above just let him to move whole of his assets to the pow coin like ethereum pow. This ethereum was fake ethereum like when bitcoin being faked by so many bitcoin fork coin.

It's all the governments' fault. They want to control Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies by enforcing KYC/AML across every single centralized exchange. When they can't control trades performed directly on the Blockchain, they quickly attack crypto by saying it's "harmful to the environment". But the thing is Bitcoin can be as clean as any ordinary PoS coin if miners use alternative/renewable energy sources. If the vast majority of miners begin using solar, wind, geothermal, or even hydroelectric energy, then PoW would be environmentally-friendly.

This is nothing more than a plan for governments to push PoS in order to centralize the entire crypto/Blockchain space. Sadly, Ethereum fell for it by adopting the consensus algorithm. Other cryptocurrencies like Cardano, BNB, and even Polygon (MATIC) are PoS, so it should only be a matter of time before Bitcoin remains as the sole PoW cryptocurrency in the world. Even Zcash hinted the possibility of switching to PoS for "self-sustainability". I'm pretty sure whales will fill their pockets with a lot of money, leaving the little guy out of the system. What matters is that Bitcoin remains a PoW cryptocurrency to resist the evil forces of centralization. As long as it stays that way, no one will be able to stop it. Just my thoughts ;D

Well it looks like POS is closer to a centralized system. although not completely centered. However, POS is more widely referred to as environmentally friendly. and it seems that Ethereum is switching to POS because they want to get support from the Government which is more supportive of the POS system that many say is more environmentally friendly. But I actually see that behind the environmentally friendly there is another agenda, which is easier to control because it is closer to a centralized system.

The important thing is that bitcoin does not eventually break down in the face of government oppression. The government has two ways to fully control bitcoin:

1. Moves to PoS, controlling the blockchain, transactions and capacity, blocking and sanctioning any address. The perfect control tool. But there is a nuance here, a move to pos may kill all faith in bitcoin, so such drastic measures may turn out badly for the value of this asset.

2. The regulation of cryptocurrencies is being actively discussed. I recently came across another article where government officials are proposing to introduce KYC for bitcoin addresses. A nonsense that breaks all principles of cryptocurrencies and bitcoin, but it is already implemented. I read that in Dutch exchanges when transferring funds you have to give personal data not only of the sender, but also of the recipient. How do you like it? Alas, this is reality. This may take years or decades. After all, some 10 years have passed and now people are already more relaxed about KYC in cryptocurrency.

Fork coin was just a scam coin. POS is far better with fixed supply and token holders being considered more by the developers rather than when the coin was using POW. Miners are always doing collution in the POW coins. that's why i don't even like POW coins. POS is far better compared with POW coin. ETHW has proven if miners were always wanna creating scam coins to get fast money for them.

Altcoins with PoS algorithms can indeed be said to be centralized but can also be said to be decentralized,
because if they have become coins and have a blockchain it will be difficult to say that they are centralized,
because I believe they have more validators.

It is quite simple, ETH needs the government support for adoption.  If the government supports ETH instead of Bitcoin then majority of the government citizen, institution and establishment will tend to use ETH than Bitcoin.


They are not on that upgrade yet.  The merge as I read is the foundation of all the possible upgrade that is on the roadmap of ETH.  Once the sharding is implemented, then that is the time when gas fee won't be an issue anymore since it will solve the scalability problem of ETH

It has always been about getting the most support from the government. Otherwise, investors will look for other alternatives that're "regulatory-compliant". It's sad to say Ethereum preferred to please the regulators by sacrificing decentralization over performance/cost-efficiency. They claim ETH is now 99% energy efficient, but what they're doing is giving all of the power to centralized exchanges. It's a pity since it goes against Vitalik's original vision of making Ethereum the "decentralized platform for unstoppable applications".

There are numerous PoS coins on the market, while PoW coins like Bitcoin and Litecoin are the minority. With further tightening of government regulations, it's possible 99.99% of altcoins will turn to PoS while Bitcoin remains the only decentralized cryptocurrency with PoW consensus. I'm fine with that as long as decentralization/censorship-resistance prevails in the long run. Just my thoughts ;D