Market intelligence platform Santiment revealed that two addresses had processed 46.15% of transactions over the Ethereum blockchain post the Merge.
According to the data, the first address validated 188 blocks or approximately 29% of the nodes, and the second validated 105 blocks or about 16% of the nodes. The third address validated 54 blocks or about 8% of the nodes.
The broader crypto community viewed the Merge, Ethereum’s transition from PoW to PoS consensus, as a landmark event in the history of cryptocurrencies. However, there have always been concerns about centralization over a PoS network.
A report released by blockchain analytics firm Nansen ahead of the Merge stated that five entities hold about 64% of the staked ETH, with Binance, Coinbase, and Kraken holding nearly 30% of the corpus.
Figures from Ethernodes show that most of the 4,653 active Ethereum nodes are controlled by centralized web service providers, with only Amazon.com accounting for over 50% of the hosting nodes.
The new insights released by Santiment have now amplified centralization concerns.
In a separate tweet, Martin Köppelmann – co-founder of Gnosis, revealed the two addresses belonged to Coinbase and Lido.
Köppelmann further added that the top 7 entities control over two-third of the stake.
Nodes play an integral role in supporting a PoS network by verifying transactions. In Ethereum’s case, participants must stake 32 ETH to run validators.
PoS proponents have argued that the mechanism is more eco-friendly and secure than PoW. However, even though its too early to draw any inference, the Merge might play out against Ethereum’s objective to achieve complete decentralization.
Meanwhile, ETH’s price has fallen more than 10% post the Merge event, according to CMC data.
