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Flashbots account for over 82% of relay blocks on Ethereum - centralization concerns increase

 

By Nerly Shammah, Sep 18, 2022

 

 

Following the transition from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake, the crypto space has reacted in numerous ways to account if the merge only made way for consensus centralization.

 

The Ethereum blockchain successfully merged on Thursday at 06:42:42 UTC following the last block being mined via the proof-of-work algorithm, this sent comments in the air as industry players and communities shared numerous thoughts on the merge.

 

Prior to the merge, a report from MessariCrypto claimed that 69% of 65% of Ethereum Nodes hosted in data centers were centralized. In detail, Amazon, Hetzner, and OVH were notably called out for being the central power of Ethereum Nodes. 

 

With Amazon controlling about 50% of the aforementioned nodes in the data centers, this sparked conversations leading to speculations about alternative networks possibly solving the issues of centralized node operations.

 

That said, Flashbots have been spotted to relay blocks accounting for roughly 82.37% of blocks on Ethereum, these categories of transactions are not often available to other network participants as they are privately rendered and thus, not available in the mempool.

 

Since the switch to POS, the inner workings of the Ethereum network have since been traced back to "centralization"

 

Public speakers have shared views on how the transition may have made the chain a termed "World Economic Forum" WEF coin, giving leads to people at the top.

Similarly, santimentfeed shared data indicating that 46.15% of the newly transitioned Ethereum proof-of-stake nodes are attributed to two addresses, namely Lido and Coinbase. 

 

The centralization of the Ethereum network has since the merge climbed its way up the charts of community topics, and prominent industry players have likewise spoken on several centralization topics like BitMEX proposal for the redevelopment of Flashbots and similar systems.