I’ve written and talked about Ethereum client diversity a lot over the last few months - especially around the need to have a much healthier client ecosystem. Well, today Michael Sproul posted an updated look at client diversity and it’s look absolutely amazing! Prysm, previously the supermajority client (66% network share), has now been reduced to just ~40% whereas Lighthouse, Teku and Nimbus have all increased their share (and Lodestar is finally getting some love).

Michael Sproul @sproulM_

Here's clientdiversity.org updated with the latest data - Coinbase switched a bunch of validators from Pyrsm to Lighthouse 🚀 - Prysm's fraction is a slight underestimate due to confusion with Nimbus - Lodestar is back!

May 17th 2022

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For those of you who don’t know the history here, the tl;dr is that a few months ago Prysm had a greater than 66% share of the Beacon Chain validators which presented huge risks and an unhealthy Beacon Chain. This led to a call to arms from the Ethereum community for people to switch from using Prysm to one of the other clients. This battle was fought well and many awesome people worked hard to get bigger stakers (such as exchanges) to switch from using Prysm (Coinbase and Kraken both had 90%+ Prysm usage - now they only have 68% and 81% respectively - and dropping fast).

What I loved most about this call to arms was that it really shows the power of Ethereum’s social layer. This wasn’t championed by the core devs, the Ethereum foundation, Vitalik or anyone else that people normally say Ethereum is centralized around - it was championed by the community all on its own (thanks in large part to the leadership from Superphiz). And the best part is that it actually worked - it wasn’t just people screaming into the void - real change and impact was put into motion through the sheer willpower of the community.

There’s another similar challenge that the community is rising to at the moment and that’s around staking pool centralization. This one is a little trickier since ETH stake won’t be able to be withdrawn from the Beacon Chain until early next year, but we can still encourage people to stake with minority pools. As for post-withdrawals, I actually think we’re going to see a “Great Reshuffling” of ETH stake - essentially I believe that a lot of people are going to move their stake around once withdrawals are enabled. Now, it’s anyone’s guess where people move their stake to, but I’m hoping that people choose decentralized/non-custodial ways to stake rather than just going with a centralized provider.

Ethereum’s social layer has never been stronger - from improving client diversity to attracting the best talent - Ethereum is where the smartest minds live and thrive. But let’s not rest on our laurels as maintaining a healthy social layer takes vigilance and hard-work - after all, we really don’t want to end up like the Bitcoin community (though maybe at some scale that’s inevitable - a discussion for another time)!

Have a great day everyone,
Anthony Sassano

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All information presented above is for educational purposes only and should not be taken as investment advice.