ARK Invest and Glassnode’s joint study found that three measured entities could cross the critical block-production thresholds for both Bitcoin and Ethereum, while Solana required 19 validators. The 32-page report, The Decentralization Spectrum: Design Tradeoffs in Digital Assets, compares the three networks across ownership, exit fluidity, verification costs, critical resilience, reconstruction costs and infrastructure distribution.
The findings do not mean that three companies control Bitcoin or Ethereum. The methodology counts mining pools and staking platforms as entities, even when the underlying hardware, stake or node operators belong to separate participants who can withdraw or redirect their resources.
Bitcoin’s three-pool threshold does not equal ownership
The report applied a 51% hash-rate threshold to Bitcoin. Foundry USA accounted for 27.27% of the measured hash rate, followed by AntPool at 17.06% and F2Pool at 16.96%. Together, the three pools exceeded 61%.
This produced a Nakamoto coefficient of three, meaning the minimum number of measured entities needed to cross a network’s critical production threshold. ViaBTC controlled another 9.50%, while SpiderPool accounted for 5.82%.
Mining pools coordinate block construction and distribute rewards, but they do not necessarily own the machines generating their hash rate. Independent miners connect to pools to receive steadier income and can redirect their computing power elsewhere.
That mobility limits how closely pool concentration can be equated with permanent control. The report estimated that a Bitcoin miner could switch a 1% hash-rate position in approximately 29 seconds. A coordinated attack or censorship attempt could encourage participants to leave the pools involved.
Mining pools still influence transaction inclusion and ordering because they typically provide the block templates used by miners. Pool concentration therefore represents an operational risk, even if it overstates the concentration of underlying mining ownership.
The issue is not new. Earlier crypto.news reporting found that two mining pools produced a majority of sampled Bitcoin blocks in late 2022. Pool shares have changed since then, but block production remains concentrated among several large coordinators.
Ethereum crosses a lower threshold through pooled stake
ARK Invest and Glassnode applied a 33% stake threshold to Ethereum because participants controlling one-third of staked $ETH can disrupt finality. This differs from Bitcoin’s 51% majority threshold, meaning the two Nakamoto coefficients do not describe identical powers.
Lido represented 23.04% of staked $ETH in the report’s July data. Binance controlled 8.88%, and Kraken held 6.91%. Together, the three entities represented approximately 38.8%, taking Ethereum above the selected threshold.
Lido is not a single validator. It distributes stake among multiple node operators, although those operators participate through a common protocol and governance framework. The report therefore treats Lido as shared infrastructure that aggregates economic weight rather than as one machine or company directly controlling every validator.
Ethereum’s exit mechanics also limit validator mobility. The report estimated that exiting a 1% position would take around 14.6 days under current conditions and as long as 55.6 days during heavy congestion. That is significantly slower than redirecting Bitcoin hash rate.
Client diversity provides another layer of resilience. The study placed Geth’s execution-client share at 34.88%, followed by Nethermind at 26.96% and Reth at 18.98%. Lighthouse represented 54.16% of consensus clients.
Different clients independently implement Ethereum’s rules, reducing the share of the network exposed to a single software defect. Because Ethereum nodes and software clients are distinct layers, validator concentration alone cannot describe the network’s full failure risk.
Solana’s 19-validator result comes with infrastructure costs
Solana recorded the highest Nakamoto coefficient for the selected block-production threshold. The report found that 19 validators were needed to control more than 33% of delegated stake.
Figment was the largest individual validator at 3.78%, followed by Helius at 3.69%, Jupiter at 2.91%, Binance Staking at 2.81% and Ledger by Figment at 2.16%. The remaining 84.65% was distributed among other validators.
One passage in the report says Solana requires 20 entities, but its chart, comparison table and published Glassnode summary all report a coefficient of 19. The table also says the figure increased from 18 in March 2026.
Solana’s validator distribution performed well on this measure, but its physical infrastructure was more concentrated. Approximately 100% of the infrastructure measured by the researchers operated in commercial data centers. About 68% was located in Europe, while 21% was in North America.
TeraSwitch hosted 30.23% of measured stake, and the top two hosting companies served around 35.7%. Shared infrastructure can create correlated failures even when the validator set includes many separate operators.
That risk became visible in August, when 102 of 699 Solana validators stopped voting during a TeraSwitch routing problem. Solana continued processing transactions, but the episode showed how a single infrastructure failure can affect multiple otherwise independent validators.
The report used Solana geographic data from November 2024, while most Bitcoin and Ethereum infrastructure data came from July 2026. This timing difference limits direct comparisons and leaves room for Solana’s distribution to have changed.
Bitcoin leads in infrastructure resilience and auditability
Bitcoin had the lowest verification requirements in the study. Researchers estimated the hardware cost for a full node at $289, compared with $730 for Ethereum and $21,478 for a Solana RPC node or validator-class configuration.
Bitcoin’s measured full-chain storage requirement was 753 gigabytes. Ethereum required approximately two terabytes for a full archive setup, while reconstructing Solana’s history was estimated at 480 terabytes because historical data is commonly offloaded to external providers.
Bitcoin also had the most distributed hosting profile. Only 16% of measured infrastructure operated in data centers, while 63% of nodes used Tor. Another 15% was residential or self-hosted.
For Ethereum, approximately 49% of execution-layer nodes operated in cloud environments and 45% used self-hosted settings. AWS alone hosted around 20%, while the top two providers accounted for approximately 27%.
Solana’s higher hardware and bandwidth demands reflect its focus on throughput. The tradeoff is that fewer ordinary users can independently recreate or verify the network’s full history using consumer equipment.
No single score determines blockchain decentralization
The report ranked Bitcoin as the most decentralized of the three networks overall, followed by Ethereum and Solana. Bitcoin led in ownership distribution, auditability and geographic resilience.
Ethereum generally occupied the middle position across the six dimensions. Solana scored strongly for its critical resilience threshold and validator participation but ranked lower for ownership distribution, verification accessibility and infrastructure diversity.
The methodology remains sensitive to how entities are grouped. Exchanges can hold tokens for many customers, mining pools aggregate independent miners, and staking protocols coordinate multiple operators. Wallet-size bands can likewise combine custodial assets belonging to thousands of users.
The comparison is therefore more useful as a map of separate concentration risks than as a definitive ranking. A network may distribute block production broadly while relying heavily on several hosting companies, software clients or governance organizations.
Future editions could improve comparability by using synchronized data dates, separating pools from underlying resource owners and distinguishing censorship thresholds from thresholds capable of rewriting finalized history.
FAQs
Do three entities control Bitcoin?
No. Three measured mining pools exceeded 51% of the hash rate, but independent miners supply much of that computing power and can change pools.
Can three Ethereum platforms rewrite the blockchain?
The report’s three-entity figure concerns the 33% stake threshold associated with disrupting finality. It does not represent the stronger two-thirds threshold needed for other consensus actions.
Why does Solana score 19?
The 19 figure is the minimum number of validators whose combined delegated stake exceeds the report’s 33% threshold.
Which blockchain did the report rank as most decentralized?
Bitcoin ranked highest overall because of its accessible verification, dispersed ownership and comparatively resilient geographic infrastructure.
Source: cryptonews.net
