Joint scorecard measures minimum entities needed to control major protocols
ARK Invest and Glassnode have quantified blockchain capture risk by measuring the smallest group of block-production entities required to cross protocol-relevant control thresholds: three for Bitcoin, three for Ethereum, and 19 for Solana.
The framework, published Sept. 1, weights hash rate for Bitcoin and stake for Ethereum and Solana. Bitcoin’s three-entity threshold reflects dominance by Foundry USA (26.88% of blocks), AntPool (16.91%), and F2Pool (15.25%), which combined produce 59.04% of the network’s blocks as of Sept. 6, according to the joint report.
The metric isolates consensus-layer risk from infrastructure dependencies. “Pool and validator counts measure coordination risk, while hosting and shared software create separate exposures,” according to analysis cited in CryptoSlate. Individual miners retain the ability to redirect hash rate; the report estimates a miner can redirect a 1% Bitcoin position in 30 seconds.
Ethereum’s threat model distinguishes attack types by stake threshold. A 33% stake can delay finality; 50% can censor transactions; 66% can finalize the chain. As of Sept. 6, Lido holds 21.17% of staked ether per Rated Network data, while SSV holds 16.56% and Binance 7.77%. Lido’s 544 entities represent distributed operators beneath a single label.
Solana’s Nakamoto coefficient, which measures minimum entities needed to halt the network, varies across measurement sources. Solana Compass reported 18 as of Sept. 6; the ARK/Glassnode report cited 19; the Solana Foundation’s June 2025 health report measured 20 from April 2025 data collection.
Infrastructure creates correlated failure modes independent of consensus thresholds. The report found 63% of Bitcoin nodes operate behind Tor, though Clark Moody’s Sept. 6 dashboard showed 48.3% of 12,959 Tor nodes among 26,837 reachable nodes. Ethereum validators face concentration on cloud infrastructure: 20% of nodes run on AWS per the joint report, while 14.4% of validator hosts use AWS per Rated Network.
Solana’s execution layer shows software concentration. The Solana Foundation’s April 2025 report found 92% of stake running Agave or Jito clients, with only 7% on Firedancer or Frankendancer. Data center hosting is diffuse by count but concentrated by stake: TeraSwitch and Latitude combined host 45.70% of stake, though the Solana Foundation identified 100 data center providers and Solana Compass currently tracks 437 data centers.
The ARK/Glassnode framework ranked Bitcoin first in composite decentralization despite its smaller block-production coalition, reflecting differences in how pools relate to underlying miner ownership and exit speed. “Institutions considering a blockchain as settlement infrastructure must define the failure they need to survive before selecting a metric,” according to the analysis.
