ETH Nodes Remain Concentrated in Western Countries, Cambridge Study Finds

A new study from the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance found that about 31% of Ethereum node activity is in the United States, while about 39% is in the EU excluding the United Kingdom, showing that Ethereum nodes remain concentrated in Western countries. According to Odaily, the study was led by Alexander Neumuller.

Neumuller said node distribution is not concentrated in a single country, but it relies heavily on a small number of cloud providers, including Hetzner, Amazon AWS, and OVH. He also said Ethereum does not need half of validators to fail before problems emerge, as the network may be unable to finalize checkpoints if more than one-third of validators go offline at the same time. He noted that nodes and validators do not have a one-to-one relationship, so it is not possible to determine precisely how a failure at a single node or provider would affect the validation network.

The study also re-evaluated Ethereum’s energy use after The Merge. It said Ethereum’s current annual energy consumption is about 7.9 GWh, equivalent to about 1 MW of continuous power, or about 0.02% of the level before The Merge, reflecting a decline of about 99.98%. The network currently uses sustainable energy for more than 56% of its power, above the global average.

The report also said client software concentration is another potential risk. If a dominant client has a vulnerability, it could affect many network participants. The report was released by the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance and supported by the Ethereum Foundation.