Experts from the analytics company LongHash compared the activity of mining pools on Bitcoin, Ethereum and Bitcoin Cash. As it turned out, Bitcoin is the most decentralized cryptocurrency among the compared cryptocurrencies, as a result of which most of the hashrate of the leading cryptocurrency is hard to seize.
But with Ethereum the situation looks not entirely promising — just two large mining pools control more than half of the coin's hashrate — Ethermine and SparkTool_3. Bitcoin Cash is also «governed» by just two large players — BTC.TOP and BTC.com. Ripple can also be blamed for centralization, but most other altcoins correspond even less to the original ideas of Satoshi Nakamoto.
And how are things with Bitcoin? Here, pulling off a 51% attack would take some effort. Only 29 percent of the cryptocurrency's hashrate is controlled by two large pools (BTC.com and Antpool). At the same time, the coin's «decentralization» is gradually growing. Back in June 2018 Antpool managed to seize 41 percent of all the capacity on BTC. At that moment many analysts began to doubt the prospects of the first cryptocurrency. Both pools are controlled by Bitmain, and this company already has a significant share of the mining equipment market. Fortunately, Bitmain's management understood its mistake and reduced the pools' hashrates so as not to cause unrest in the crypto community.
Over the past 6 months Bitmain's pools have lost about 28 percent of the hashrate. This shifted the situation in favor of greater decentralization of Bitcoin in the future. In conclusion, the analysts noted that as the industry grows, the threat of its centralization is becoming increasingly apparent. In Bitcoin's early days, mining had a more even distribution.
