Crypto analytics portal Messari released a study that showed that of 65% of Ethereum nodes located in centralized data centers, two-thirds of them come from three major data providers of web services. Thus, Hetzner, OVH and Amazon Web Services account for 69% of all nodes located in data centers. Moreover, Amazon's combined share here is 53.7%.
Crypto needs to decentralize.
— Messari (@MessariCrypto) August 18, 2022
Three major cloud providers are responsible for 69% of the 65% of @Ethereum nodes hosted in data centers.
Of the estimated 95% of @Solana nodes hosted in data centers, 72% are hosted with the same cloud providers as @Ethereum. pic.twitter.com/oK08c3G6Of
According to the source, roughly 95% of all Solana nodes are hosted in data centers and, interestingly, 72% of them are also hosted by those three web service providers listed above. That said, Solana nodders seem to place more emphasis on Hetzner, which holds 42% of all centralized blockchain nodes. Amazon Web Services, on the other hand, holds less than 3% of Solana's nodes.
The report raises the question of whether Amazon could somehow manipulate Ethereum, given the concentration of 1,487 of 4,653 active nodes in its "hands." More interesting would be to see if Jeff Bezos would be able to knock out most DeFi applications on Ethereum if he wanted to.
Ethereum has "right to protection"
It is worth noting that it is an extremely good time to release such a breakdown when, today, Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum himself, launched a verbal attack on XRP. Vitalik said that the cryptocurrency has lost its "right to protection," without explaining who should protect it.
However, if Ethereum itself has such a "right to protection," then the crypto world probably should not worry about a seemingly excessive concentration of nodes in the hands of one web-service provider.
Arman Shirinyan
Dan Burgin
Alex Dovbnya
Vladislav Sopov