Cloud Hosting

Ethereum execution client Geth has seen its market share fall after community members raised concerns over the networks diversity, fearing Geths concentration could lead to a black swan event.

On Jan. 23, Geths market share of the Ethereum network execution clients fell 5.2% to 78.8% after reaching 84% the day prior.

Geth is critical in handling transactions and executing smart contracts on Ethereum, but its preference among Ethereum validators has led to an imbalance in execution client diversity on Ethereum, sparking centralization concerns.

Ethereum decentralization advocates, including the founding member of the ETHStaker community, known as Superphiz, stressed in a Jan. 24poston X (formerly Twitter) that a bug in Geth could lead to a more than 80% wipeout of Ether (ETH) staked on the network.

Im not trying to convince you that every execution client is as robust or as mature as Geth. Im just telling you that its a good idea to use less robust clients to prevent a black swan event, he explained in another post.

Lachlan Feeney, founder and CEO of Ethereum infrastructure firm Labrys, suggested in a Jan. 23 blog post that Ethereum validators could risk losing everything.

Probably not, but this is what 84% of the Ethereum stakers are doing today, Feeney added.

As Geths current share exceeds 2/3rds (or 66%), Feeney said a critical bug would instantly stop the chain from finalizing.

In that scenario, Geth validators that go offline would be subject to an inactivity leak, which results in the burning of their staked Ether until the execution recalibrates to a 1/3rd (or 33.3%) share of the network.

Feeney said 90% of a validators staked Ether could be wiped within roughly 40 days.

However, Feeney told Cointelegraph there would be a very small window for validators to exit and limit their losses, as there is a rate-limited queue for how many validators can exit per epoch.

Related: Ethereum devs expect 10x lower rollup costs as Dencun upgrade hits testnets

Nethermind, the second-largest execution client, increased its share from around 8% to 14% on Jan. 23.

Netherminds increased uptake came despite it identifying and fixing a critical bug in several versions of its execution client that caused users to fail to process blocks on Ethereum two days earlier.

Coinbase, one of the largest Ethereum validators running on Geth, announced its plan to transition to a multi-client infrastructure in the coming months.

The exchange explained Geth was the only Ethereum execution client that met its technical requirements since it started Ethereum staking in 2020.

However, the tide is turning, said Coinbase.

Magazine: Ethereum restaking: Blockchain innovation or dangerous house of cards?

Link:

Geth Ethereum network share falls 5% after fears raised of 'black swan event' - Cointelegraph