Bitcoin supporter Samson Mow highlights the centralization aspect of the merger
Samson Mow, a well-known Bitcoin supporter, recently took to social media to talk about the centralization aspects of the upcoming merger, which he claimed is not widely known.
Ethereum is in countdown mode after the completion of the Bellatrix upgrade on September 6th and is ready for the official transition between the 13th-15th. September, depending on the hashrate input (data power) on the network. The merge is calculated to be triggered by a difficulty threshold called Terminal Total Difficulty (TTD) at a value of 587500000000000000000000.
Mow argued that while everyone believes that the merger will be triggered by preset threshold difficulty, there is one aspect that not many have noticed. He said that node operators have the power to overwrite the TTD value with a single line of code.
Mow cited a Galaxy blog post that highlighted the key centralization issue with the merger and claimed that Ethereum has deliberately suppressed this fact.
So how exactly is MeRgE triggered? I was curious so I did some digging. I thought it could be set with a fixed mechanism or emergency threshold, but no. Someone, probably Vitalik, will just say “go” and it will happen. The complex performance is to mask the centralization. pic.twitter.com/PmxcTMU8J5
— Samson Mow (@Excellion) 7 September 2022
He noted that with few nodes that matter, “so those in charge can simply ‘feed the actual value’ for activation time whenever they feel like it. What’s funny is that they create tracking pages to ‘predict’ when it will happen.” “
Cointelegraph caught up with Mow to get his perspective on the upcoming merger and the centralization debate surrounding Ethereum’s upcoming transition. Mow told Cointelegraph that with a move to proof-of-stake (PoS), “the centralization aspect of Ethereum would become permanent.”
Related: Vitalik reminds node operators to update the client before the Bellatrix upgrade
He added that in a PoS system, node operators are solely responsible for decision-making, which is evident from the TTD override example. He said:
“If Ethereums really wanted something energy efficient, scalable and cheaper, they would do R&D on Bitcoin second tier technologies like Lightning and Liquid.”
Ethereum’s move to a PoS network started as a strategy to solve the problem of scalability, but soon became a matter of energy efficiency amid increasing scrutiny of the Bitcoin network’s energy consumption. The merger will mark the completion of the second phase of the three-phase transition process, and the majority of key benefits, including cheaper gas charges and faster transaction throughput, will come with the completion of the third phase.
