Bitcoin Shows Higher Decentralization Than Ethereum and Solana, ARK Study Finds

A joint study by ARK Invest and Glassnode released on September 1 examined the concentration of block‑production power across Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana. Using a 51 % hash‑rate threshold for Bitcoin and a 33 % stake threshold for Ethereum and Solana, the report calculated the Nakamoto coefficient – the minimum number of entities needed to exceed the critical production threshold.

Bitcoin: Three Pools Reach 51 % Hash‑Rate

Three mining pools – Foundry USA (27.27 % of measured hash‑rate), AntPool (17.06 %) and F2Pool (16.96 %) – together exceed 61 % of Bitcoin’s hash‑rate, giving Bitcoin a Nakamoto coefficient of three. The study notes that pools coordinate block construction but do not own the underlying hardware; independent miners can switch pools quickly (approximately 29 seconds for a 1 % hash‑rate shift), limiting permanent control.

Ethereum: Staking Platforms Hold Over One‑Third of Stake

Applying a 33 % stake threshold, the report finds three staking entities – Lido (23.04 % of staked ETH), Binance (8.88 %) and Kraken (6.91 %) – collectively hold about 38.8 % of the stake, surpassing the threshold. Lido aggregates stake across multiple validators, and exiting a 1 % position can take 14.6 days (up to 55.6 days under congestion). Client diversity adds resilience: Geth (34.88 % of execution clients), Nethermind (26.96 %) and Reth (18.98 %) share the execution layer, while Lighthouse accounts for 54.16 % of consensus clients.

Solana: Nineteen Validators Needed for 33 % Stake

Solana’s Nakamoto coefficient is 19, meaning 19 validators must combine to exceed the 33 % delegated‑stake threshold. The largest validator, Figment, holds 3.78 % of stake, followed by Helius (3.69 %), Jupiter (2.91 %) and Binance Staking (2.81 %). Although validator distribution appears broad, nearly all infrastructure resides in commercial data centers – about 100 % of measured nodes – with 68 % in Europe and 21 % in North America. A routing issue at the hosting provider TeraSwitch in August caused 102 of 699 validators to stop voting, illustrating correlated risk.

Infrastructure and Verification Costs

Hardware cost estimates for a full node differ sharply: Bitcoin $289, Ethereum $730, and Solana $21,478 for an RPC/validator‑class setup. Storage requirements are 753 GB for Bitcoin, ~2 TB for Ethereum (full archive) and 480 TB for Solana (historical data often off‑loaded). Hosting profiles show Bitcoin’s nodes are most dispersed – 63 % run via Tor, 16 % in data centers, and 15 % residential/self‑hosted. Ethereum’s execution‑layer nodes are 49 % cloud‑based (20 % on AWS) and 45 % self‑hosted. Solana’s nodes are largely data‑center based, reflecting its higher throughput demands.

Overall Ranking

Based on ownership distribution, auditability, geographic resilience, verification accessibility and infrastructure diversity, the report ranks Bitcoin as the most decentralized of the three, followed by Ethereum and then Solana.