Data shows that the servers of three centralized providers host more than two-thirds of all nodes of the Ethereum decentralized network.
Analysts of the Messari platform have shared that 69% of all Ethereum nodes are hosted on the cloud-based servers of the three major centralized services.
More than half of Ethereum’s 4,653 active nodes rely on Amazon Web Services (AWS). Another 15% of nodes are on the Hetzner platform, and 4.1% are hosted on OVH. Data from the Ethernodes service completes the picture, specifying that some of the nodes are located on other centralized hosts:
- Oracle — 4.1%;
- Alibaba — 3.9%;
- Google — 3.5%.
Therefore, most of the active Ethereum nodes are located on the resources of centralized web providers. This poses risks for the project associated with the potential limitation of access to data processing nodes and the emergence of a single point of failure.
Furthermore, Ethereum nodes are geographically concentrated in the United States (46.4%) and Germany (13.4%), nearly 60% of the network’s distributed nodes worldwide. This is also evidenced by data provided by Ethernodes. There is a chance of political pressure on Ethereum, as the government of one of these two countries is able to influence the network’s decentralization at the node level.
To recap, the Ethereum network is actively preparing for the final stage of the transition to Proof-of-Stake. Investors are excited about the project’s success, and Tether and Circle, issuers of the largest stablecoins, officially have supported The Merge.
