Ethereum[1]‘s main chain is expected to merge with its Beacon Chain later this year, effectively turning it into a Proof of Stake protocol. In anticipation of this, users have increasingly been staking their ETH, with the staking deposit contract[2] amassing over 9.41 million Ether worth over $24.83 billion at press time.
While anticipation for the Merge is mounting, so are concerns over increasing centralization within beacon chain clients being used by validators. This is especially true for validators run by centralized exchanges such as Coinbase and Kraken, who “hold 78k out of 296k validators on the Ethereum beacon chain.”
Validators are those that have staked their Ether into the deposit contract in exchange for the ability to validate blocks and also receive rewards.
A community member recently pointed out[3] the same on Twitter, adding that these exchanges are using Prysmatic Labs to run all of their validators. This could lead to client centralization within the network, making it more susceptible to attacks.
The Ethereum network has a number of interoperable clients that are developed in various languages. Validators can utilize these for both their ease and to ensure that the impact of any bugs or hacks is limited to the portion of the network running the affected client.
Source: jmcook.eth/mirror.xyz[4]
However, Ethereum developer Jonathan Cook noted in a recent blog post[5] that “the vast majority of Ethereum nodes run a single client, inviting unnecessary risk to the network.” He added,
“With even distribution of validators across multiple clients the consequences of attacks or bugs that exploit specific clients is drastically reduced, whereas single-client dominance acts as a risk multiplier.”
This is because a bug affecting any consensus client can either directly cause false attestations. Or else, it
