Samson Mow, a well-known bitcoin proponent, recently took to social media to talk about Merge’s centralized features, which he says are not widely known.
Ethereum is in countdown mode after completing the Bellatrix upgrade on September 6, and is ready for the official transition between September 13 and 15, depending on the hashrate (computing power) on the network. A difficulty threshold called the Total Terminal Difficulty (TTD) worth 58,750,000,000,000,000,000,000 should trigger the Merge.
Mow said that while everyone thinks The Merge will be triggered at the default difficulty threshold, there is one aspect that many people have noticed. He said that node operators have the power to override the TTD value with a single line of code.
Mow cited a blog post from the Galaxy that highlighted the main centralization issue with the Merger. He claimed that Ethereum deliberately suppressed this fact.
So how is the Merger actually triggered? I was curious so I did some digging. I thought it could be fixed with a fixed mechanism or readiness threshold, but no. Someone, probably Vitalik, will say “go” and then it happens. The tricky charade is to hide the centralization. pic.twitter.com/PmxcTMU8J5
— Samson Mow (@Excellion) September 7, 2022
So how does Blending inspire? I was curious and did some research. I thought it could be fixed with a fixed mechanism or readiness threshold, but no. Someone, probably Vitalik, just says “go” and he goes. This complex masquerade serves to mask centralization. pic.twitter.com/PmxcTMU8J5 — Samson Mow (@Excellion) September 7, 2022
He noted that nodes matter little, “so managers can just ‘feed a real value’ for activation time whenever they feel it.” The funniest thing is that they then create tracking sites to ‘predict’ when it will happen”.
Cointelegraph reached out to Mow for their perspective on The Merge and the centralization debate looming in the upcoming Ethereum transition. Mow told Cointelegraph that with the move to Proof-of-Stake (PoS), “the centralized feature of Ethereum will become permanent.”
Also Read: Vitalik Alerts Node Operators Before Bellatrix Upgrade
He added that in a PoS system, the node operators are solely responsible for decision-making, which is evident in the example of the TTD cancellation. He said :
“If Ethereum users wanted to have something that was energy efficient, scalable and cheaper, they would R&D second tier Bitcoin network technologies like Lightning and Liquid.”
Ethereum’s move to a PoS network began as a strategy to address its scalability issues, but quickly became an argument for energy efficiency amid increasing scrutiny of the bitcoin network’s power consumption. Merger would complete the second phase of the three-phase transition process, with most of the key benefits, including lower transaction fees and faster transaction throughput, coming when the third phase is completed.
