Measuring the Concentration of Control in Contemporary Ethereum

Simon Brown

Paper 2023/1493

Measuring the Concentration of Control in Contemporary Ethereum

Simon Brown, Consensys

Abstract

Ethereum is undergoing significant changes to its architecture as it evolves. These changes include its switch to PoS consensus and the introduction of significant infrastructural changes that do not require a change to the core protocol, but that fundamentally affect the way users interact with the network. These changes represent an evolution toward a more modular architecture, in which there exists new exogenous vectors for centralization. This paper builds on previous studies of decentralization of Ethereum to reflect these recent significant changes, and Ethereum’s new modular paradigm.

Metadata

Available format(s): PDF
Category: Foundations
Publication info: Preprint.
Keywords: blockchain Ethereum decentralization cryptocurrency cryptoeconomics
Contact author(s): simon brown @ consensys net
History: 2023-10-03: revised; 2023-09-29: received; See all versions
Short URL: https://ia.cr/2023/1493
License: CC BY

BibTeX

@misc{cryptoeprint:2023/1493,
      author = {Simon Brown},
      title = {Measuring the Concentration of Control in Contemporary Ethereum},
      howpublished = {Cryptology {ePrint} Archive, Paper 2023/1493},
      year = {2023},
      url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2023/1493}
}