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Bitcoin's three-pool threshold does not equal ownership
The report applied a 51% hash-rate threshold to Bitcoin. Foundry USA represented 27.27% of the measured hash rate, followed by AntPool at 17.06% and F2Pool at 16.96%. Together, the three pools exceeded 61%, producing a Nakamoto coefficient of three, defined as the minimum number of measured entities needed to cross a network's critical production threshold.
Mining pools coordinate block construction and distribute rewards, but they do not necessarily own the machines producing their hash rate. Independent miners connect to pools to receive steadier income and can redirect their computing power elsewhere. The report estimated a Bitcoin miner could switch a 1% hash-rate position in approximately 29 seconds. A coordinated attack or censorship attempt could prompt participants to leave the responsible pools, limiting how closely pool concentration can be equated with permanent control.
Ethereum crosses threshold through pooled stake
ARK and Glassnode applied a 33% stake threshold to Ethereum because participants controlling one-third of staked ETH can disrupt finality. Lido represented 23.04% of staked ETH, Binance controlled 8.88%, and Kraken held 6.91%. Those three entities collectively represented approximately 38.8%, taking Ethereum above the selected threshold.
Lido is not a single validator but distributes stake among multiple node operators. The report treats Lido as shared infrastructure that aggregates economic weight rather than one company directly controlling every validator. Ethereum's exit mechanics also restrict validator mobility. The report estimated that exiting a 1% position would take around 14.6 days under current conditions and as long as 55.6 days under heavy congestion, much slower than redirecting Bitcoin hash rate. Client diversity provides another layer of resilience, with Geth's execution-client share at 34.88%, followed by Nethermind at 26.96% and Reth at 18.98%.
Solana's higher coefficient comes with infrastructure costs
Solana recorded the highest Nakamoto coefficient for the selected block-production threshold. The report found that 19 validators were needed to control more than 33% of delegated stake. Figment was the largest individual validator at 3.78%, followed by Helius at 3.69%, Jupiter at 2.91%, and Binance Staking at 2.81%.
However, Solana's physical infrastructure was more concentrated. Approximately 100% of the infrastructure measured by the researchers operated in commercial data centers. About 68% was in Europe, while 21% was in North America. TeraSwitch hosted 30.23% of measured stake, and the top two hosting companies served around 35.7%. Common infrastructure can create correlated failures even when the validator set contains many separate operators. That risk became visible in August when 102 of 699 Solana validators stopped voting during a TeraSwitch routing problem.
Bitcoin leads infrastructure resilience and auditability
Bitcoin had the least expensive verification requirements in the study. Hardware for a full node was estimated at $289, compared with $730 for Ethereum and $21,478 for a Solana RPC node. Bitcoin's measured full-chain storage requirement was 753 gigabytes, while Ethereum required approximately two terabytes. Reconstructing Solana's history was estimated at 480 terabytes because historical data is commonly offloaded to external providers.
Bitcoin also had the most distributed hosting profile. Only 16% of measured infrastructure operated in data centers, while 63% of nodes used Tor. Another 15% was residential or self-hosted. Ethereum placed approximately 49% of execution-layer nodes in clouds, including 20% through Amazon Web Services. The 32-page report, titled The Decentralization Spectrum, compares the networks across ownership, exit fluidity, verification costs, critical resilience, reconstruction costs, and infrastructure distribution.
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