ETH is dead on arrival because of the centralized development and decisions to observe the cult of Vitalik. Forrtunately it has spawned some good experimentation and the baby DeFi is something to behold, all of which can be replicated on the bitcoin network's Rootstock sidechain, some fortunes will be made here for sure
RootStock can do everything ETH can do ... except uses bitcoins natively.
Which do you think Institutions will use to do DeFi when they are loaded up with Bitcoin?
https://medium.com/swlh/ethereum-isnt-decentralized-and-other-myths-ef2d132ee1feAsk a Bitcoin maximalist to sing you the song of their people, and it’ll sound something like this:
That’s a lot to unpack. First — an assertion that Ethereum is centralized, followed by a never-to-be-witnessed again “immaculate conception” premise for Bitcoin’s emergence, followed by the implication that only Bitcoin is invulnerable to being co-opted by government agencies and scammers.
Do the space cat’s claims have merit? Let’s take a closer look, starting with the big one.
Is Ethereum Centralized?
For the sake of this analysis, we’ll broadly define a centralized blockchain as follows: an environment where a single actor, or a handful of actors, can exert unilateral control over the platform’s day-to-day functioning and ongoing development.
Your own definition might vary somewhat, but I think we can all agree that a centralized blockchain is one that could a.) be easily taken over by governments or corporations, and/or b.) have its functionality and development unilaterally dictated by its core creators & development team. That’s not much of a desirable outcome…hence the need for decentralization!
With that in mind, let’s turn to some of the most common arguments maximalists make when talking about Ethereum’s supposed centralization. We’ll examine their claims and consider evidence to the contrary.
Claim: Ethereum’s nodes are centralized. It takes too long to sync them, and there aren’t enough of them.
According to etherscan, there are currently over 6000 unique Ethereum nodes spread around the globe. Ethernodes shows a higher figure of around 7500.
By way of comparison, Bitcoin’s node count is somewhat more robust, at around 11,000 nodes.
Does this higher node count mean that Ethereum is centralized, while Bitcoin is not? While more nodes is certainly better (all things considered equal), Ethereum’s node count appears to be sufficiently high to avoid network attacks; the blockchain’s five years of 100% uptime offers evidence of this robustness, evoking maximalists’ beloved Lindy effect. Also consider that Bitcoin itself has performed perfectly fine recently with node counts in the 8000’s.
To be sure, this isn’t exactly an apples-to-apples comparison; the two chains’ nodes are different in important ways. Nonetheless, the underlying point remains: if an attacker such as a well-funded nation-state attempted to disrupt the network with a sustained DDOS attack, they’d face a nearly insurmountable (but not impossible) task thanks to Ethereum’s global and decentralized node distribution.
Maximalists conflate Ethereum with blockchains that have clearly chosen to trade decentralization for scalability. NEO, for instance, has a grand total of seven consensus nodes, while EOS famously has just 21 nodes. Are they being disingenuous with this conflation, or are they simply not able to see the difference? It’s hard to say.
