Bitcoin Forum

The Ethereum blockchain is currently the most used blockchain when it comes to Smart contract, NFT and Metaverse development. It achieved its leadership while it was still a decentralized network.


Unfortunately, right after the merge, Ethereum lost its decentralized feature and is now one of the most centralized cryptocurrency projects in the industry.

Given that we're going through a debate opposing Centralized vs Decentralized, do you think that Ethereum will still keep ahead of the competition? Aren't there a lot of chances of Ethereum being overcome by an alternative decentralized network?

What is your take on this matter?

It's hard to say exactly how long Ethereum will maintain its lead as a smart contract platform. But two things are certain. First, people are constantly looking for better, faster, and more scalable blockchain technologies. Second, Ethereum has plenty of competition from other formidable projects. As these other platforms improve, Ethereum will have to innovate and provide new features in order to remain in its position of leadership. It's an ongoing process that all successful platforms must undergo. That said, Ethereum is still the frontrunner in terms of public adoption, and that's not something that can be easily overcome.

I don't think anyone is thinking about centralisation or decentralisation except us. People are dictated the rules of censorship and they have to abide by them. Yes, Ethereum is the most popular blockchain and I think it will be for a long time. There are big funds and huge money behind ETH, so users don't decide anything here.

I think Ethereum has had an interrupted reign in smart contract and it has large amounts of users of its smart contract. But even before the merger happened the Ethereum network started to see less patronage than it use to get before. Back then it was so much that the network gets congested. I think this downward spiral has to do with the transactions fee on Ethereum.

Ethereum high transactions fee was slowly reducing the amount of people using because there are other networks that has good transactions speed and very affordable fee than the Ethereum network. Now with the decentralization going away on the merger I don’t know how much longer Ethereum can hang up on its position.

We might see some changes but let’s see how ETH will deal with this one.
After the merge many still choose ETH as their network and probably they still see good things about ETH. The future might be more challenging for them as they take another path but I’m confident that ETH will not do the merge of its not necessary and if that update can affect them, they do the merging for the benefit of the whole project.

By centralization you mean nodes are hosted on same cheap cloud servers. That isn't same as 51% attack. If it would be easier to host light weight node in your own home, there wouldn't be an issue and this is something i am sure they are tackling next. Compared to bitcoin, that was once mostly mined from one server farm, i don't see the issue really, some people can't afford mining btc just like some people can't afford hosting their own nodes. This will most likely change in the future with lighter clients.

if cloud servers were compromised, people would either move to other servers or host it by themselves.

Sure, things can be more decentralized but we tend to forget that the whole internet mostly runs on centralized servers and their backups.

I hear this argument about Ethereum being not decentralized anymore quite a lot in the last time and of course it is true that now the big exchanges like Binance, Coinbase, Huobi and Kucoin for example all have a lot of power within the Ethereum network because they all own so many coins. That being said i don't really think that i was that much different when Ethereum was still proof of work. I mean there were or still are huge mining companies in china and if a single company is controlling a big share of the mining power of a crypto currency then it is just as centralized.
I think that Ethereum will always be the number one smart contract platform, simply because they invented that functionality.

Seems like. Do you guys have seen how many platforms this Ethereum blockchain are tangled with? Like it was almost all projects so I guess it would remain leading because of that. Although there are blockchains which causes lower transaction fees such as Litecoin and BNB, ETH chain would still be more used because it is somehow more secured.
Ethereum is still decentralized. It is just because of third party wallets and apps which makes it seem not to. Except from high transaction fees, my another problem is delay on some of my transactions made which on my end, viewed it as traffic given how many projects are using this chain. I got used of it than to use other chains and eventually lose my funds. Better late than never, I guess.

Not quite sure about this one, although it's hard to tell since there aren't any close second at all currently. ETH still is the preferred coin when it comes to smart contracts and other app-building alts out there that wanted to do more than just being a coin. It's still a robust and very capable platform with a lot of merits that should be acknowledged first before anyone considers any other platform that offers the same as what it ETH can right now.

Ethereum had good potential to keep their standard all the time. The new traders, old traders will know the fact of Ethereum was the second position holding crypto currency. The new update of Ethereum 2.0 was based on the Ethereum. Ethereum is the only coin had huge response with the new launch next to the Bitcoin. Many coins looking for the update. But some May loss his interest among the people after the new launch. So Ethereum was the unique coin in the altcoin list. Many whales had their capital in Ethereum. They are dumping the market, when ever they want of cash.

Bitcoin keeps its leadership in cryptocurrency and Ethereum keeps its leadership in altcoins and smart contract industries. I have belief about Bitcoin and Ethereum as two biggest leaders in cryptocurrency.

It won't be easy to take over a second position of Ethereum and almost impossible to take over a King position of Bitcoin. A best candidate to take over Ethereum is Binance Smart Chain but it won't happen soon. If it happens, I believe it will happen in either 2028 or 2032, two or three bull runs later.

Dominations of Bitcoin and Ethereum are too high according to Coinmarketcap: BTC: 38.2%; ETH: 17.6%. It tells us truth about leaderships of BTC and ETH in crypto

This was their roadmap and plan for the future, it seems that solving scalability is having some negative effects on Ethereum, and started to lose its decentralized feature when Ethereum started to become proof-of-stake. We all know that proof-of-work will guarantee somehow decentralized as that is how Bitcoin works.
I know Ethereum got big team and I believe they will continue to look forward these kinds of problems and somehow they can solve it along the way.

BUt that's exactly where it shows it is not neither will be ever a good network. Ethereum always had the problem of incredibly high fees and to solve that it had to rely on other cheaper and faster networks to have it done in the cheapest way. The eth network has to rely on sidechains and Layer two solutions to be able to provide a cheap and fast network. So, basically, ethereum would not work if it wasn't for other solutions. If it can't solve what we need to have solved it is not a good network and will replaced by a new and better network very soon.

No other coin or platform could take away from it from Ethereum and still see that it will continue to lead and dominate in smart contract industries.
In fact, for many years ETH exist and several downfalls it has and with market competition, we are still able to see ETH on top among altcoins and never I see it will change even in the future.

It is a trusted platform and 2nd to Bitcoin, people are considering these projects unique from others. ETH devs will continue to provide good services to the community and protect their reputation.

I think it would take a lot before any other L1 surpass or par up with ethereum. I think that some closer are Bnb, solana and maybe matic or avalanche. But these are still young up project when it comes to adoption.

More of the people are still inclined with ethereum network when it comes to dapp usage and that better.

We haven't heard anyone yet to challenge Ethereum when it did the merging. However, in the past there have been a lot of potential takeover from other projects, but it didn't materialized and Ethereum remains on the top of the food chain.

And with that premise, if the project before who are so strong and put up a good challenge didn't win, so what make it any difference as of today despite their merger? So I believed that Ethereum will continue it's dominance as far as Smart contract and NFT and Metaverse development.

Right, those projects seems to be on the top of the competition, specially BNB before because there are a lot of projects who move it BNB or new projects abandoning ETH totally and using BNB. But then again, up to this time, we haven't seen a project that really push it's price with the BNB chain.

Most of the top projects that we all know of is under the ETH blockchain and will continue to do so despite the claims that ETH now is more centralized as there are validators and node operators that have total control and not the devs anymore. But there are no shift in power so far, not anything that I heard of.

leadership? are you serious about this? some new blockchains have been surpassing ethereum in term of total transactions for the daily usage. It's pretty much the same like anyother POS smartcontract blockchain in the market. There's no different between ethereum and any other smartcontract blockchain in the market.

I think that how centralized POS itself actually depend on the numerous factors like how many validators have been running the network. You can't judge it easily without even providing any proof.

Centralization or decentralization didn't matter a lot as long as the network can be trusted for long term. There's no even competition between any blockchain. The supporters itself over reacted with what they have been supported.

I think those that don't like how it looks like to have that type of algorithm through PoS, they'll soon to realize that PoW is still the best algo if a project wants to be secured with their network.

No offense to many other projects and chains that includes bnb and ethereum. Soon, those that want all of these shits, happening in the market will turn them done with it and want to make a change for themselves and will start to think of investing into projects that promotes PoW and first of it is BTC.

It will hold it for sure, there is no doubt about that in my mind. I understand that there are a lot of competitions and because of that people act as if there is a possibility of other coins end up being above ethereum even if not in marketcap rankings, but at least usage of smart contracts. I will agree that there will be more and more places that will take away small chunks from ethereum and that’s understandable but that doesn't mean that there will be a single one that will go over it.

Just because there are small ones that grows, doesn't mean that it’s a single project, it maybe like a dozen projects combined together becoming bigger than ETH, that’s the path right now.

I believe the point is that Ethereum doesn't have a rival on its reach. It was mentioned ETH is going centralized, but then, what strong and popular alternatives does crypto market offer towards it? The only crypto which comes to my mind is Binance Coin, as it visibly stands out among other altcoins, but it's also a centralized cryptocurrency, therefore it's more of the same compared to ETH on this case.

Then we have many other minor projects which promise pushing decentralization to the next level, however, they don't have enough popularity, originality and demand to overcome ETH's position.

Conusion: if your goal is decentralization, go for bitcoin. You don't need anything else.

How do you measure the decentralization of ETH when it's pre-merge and compared to now, besides a consensus change? Ethereum users back then are even already using a third-party RPC to connect to the network, using a centralized front-end when interacting with DApps. Nothing much different right now.

The point is, the Ethereum ecosystem seems did not bat an eye into maximizing decentralization, so there is nothing that most users lose because of the change, IMO.


For example, which smart contract oriented coin that currently exists which maximizes decentralization, is there even any?

My opinion is that support for Ethereum includes central institutions which operate in control of policy. So if it is said to be superior in competition, maybe yes. But the reality is that decentralization comes from believing that individuals don't like centralized things and that those beliefs have the power to fight back. Let's say we still prioritize Decentralization even though we occasionally use a centralized system. Even though centralized or decentralized, we all use it for our own needs, and Ethereum has clearly betrayed its original purpose.

As bitcoin was the first to create the cryptocurrency industry, so it will play the biggest role in the market, ETH leads in smart contracts so it is hard for anyone to replace it. Despite the controversy surrounding ETH as it transitions to POS, it is by far the most secure altcoin and is not hacked like other blockchains. I don't think it will face stiff competition from other blockchains but other blockchains will fear it more, the only problem it faced was the high transaction fees after it was fixed, no altcoins could compete with it.

Its because even though they completely shifted to PoS most dapps are entitled with the use on eth network. There are others too on other network but eth still be the major usage on nft, games and other application. Most use case are indeed remarkable on eth network.

While it makes sense that blockchain networks are decentralized, there are still a lot of challenges that blockchain developers face when they try to make their networks as decentralized as possible. The main challenge is that decentralization doesn't mean scalability and vice versa.

The main reasons why Ethereum is so slow and expensive is because of its smart contract feature. Every time a transaction is made on Ethereum's network, it costs one ether to process the transaction on the network. Also, every time a user wants to make an update to the Ethereum blockchain, it costs one ether to make an update.

Given these challenges, it seems that Ethereum won't be able to keep the lead they have in the industry if they don't solve these problems soon.

The potential solutions are either centralization or sharding. Either way, Ethereum will lose its decentralized nature when they decide to implement these solutions because any kind of centralization is against what blockchain stands for.

I also think the same. There's no way exact date on how long eth take the lead but I think eth will still take the lead much longer if their competition experience some problems or issue like binance having their own problems. Let's just wait for now on what eth will update later that will benefit of the project. There are other projects that use such as bnb and other project that supports smart contract but in the end they are now using bnb SC or ETH.

High gas fees are not new for ETH which has been around for many years but you can see it is still the top choice of large projects because they know that it is more secure than other layers1. Aside from the high gas fees, I don't really see a serious problem with ETH like outages or attacks like other blockchains, as long as it's safe, high gas fees shouldn't be a concern for many investors. 
Have you heard about sharding upgrade? as far as I know that upgrade it will solve the gas charge problem and it will be done in 2023. Ethereum has been on the market for years and it has proven to be an extremely secure blockchain, so users will stay with it and wait for the upgrades to improve things. I am also a fan of ETH, I am willing to pay high fees but in return I will safely stay with eth.

The kind of huge technological development Ethereum has achieved on its block chain & the big investment it has attracted from big market players; it won't be easy for its immediate competitors to challenge its leadership in the near future. I think the issue of centralized and decentralized will not matter much in future when strict regulation will be implemented by SEC to monitor transactions on all wallets either custodial or non-custodial.

Of course!! there are a very large number of tokens in the Ethereum blockchain, as well as a huge number of different NFT projects and various other developments launched on the Ethereum network, and, of course, Ethereum is of great importance in the cryptocurrency industry. In fact, it's not even necessary to discuss it, since the Ethereum platform develops the entire cryptocurrency sphere the most!!!