Ethereum devs address node centralization ahead of merger

In a few weeks, Ethereum will officially move from its current proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (PoS) mining consensus. The transition, officially titled Merge, is scheduled to take place on September 15, but Ethereum node centralization was already a hot topic ahead of the major upgrade.

Cointelegraph reported last week that most of the 4,653 active Ethereum nodes are run through centralized network providers such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), which experts believe could put the Ethereum blockchain at risk following the merger. Risk of centralized points of failure.

Distribution of Ethereum nodes from web service providers Source: Ethernodes

Maggie Love, co-founder of Web3 infrastructure company W3BCloud, also raised the same concerns. She claims that the centralization of nodes in the Ethereum PoS network could become a big problem, but no one seems to be paying attention.

Ethereum’s lead developer, Péter Szilágyi, addressed the growing centralization issue and claimed that they have been working on Pruning the database since Devcon IV. "Pruning" refers to reducing the size of the blockchain to the point where developers can create a reliable registry of a certain size.

Szilágyi added that the idea faced strong opposition at the time, and the current centralization of nodes is a direct result of that. He explained that in order for people to be able to run their own nodes, the ethereum state needs to be of constant size.

The Ethereum state refers to a large data structure that not only contains all accounts and balances, but also machine state, which can change from one block to another according to a set of predefined rules. Szilagyi explained:

"Ethereum state needs to be 'constant' in size. So that it can run forever. This constant can be increased like the block gas limit if needed, but it cannot grow infinitely. Until this problem is solved, daunting task will not be accomplished.”

He noted that all parties are actively working to fix the issue, but at the same time, the general public should not be blamed for "not wanting to maintain the larger 'infrastructure' used to run nodes."

Currently, the cost of running a single node is prohibitively high, as noted by crypto analytics firm Messari in its report. Because of such infrastructure costs, people tend to turn to cloud infrastructure service providers such as AWS. However, a high degree of centralization can be a weakness in the long run.