A series of recent incidents has renewed focus on what some experts call Ethereum’s “client diversity problem.”
While the network itself stayed resilient through back-to-back outages caused by bugs in minority clients like Nethermind and Besu, there are growing concerns that overreliance on dominant client Geth poses a lurking threat.
TLDR
Coinbase relies entirely on the Geth client to run its Ethereum infrastructure, prompting concerns over centralization and potential network instability if issues emerge.
84% of Ethereum validators currently use the Geth client, leading to calls for greater client diversity to limit fallout from potential bugs.
A critical bug emerged in the Nethermind client used by 8% of validators, sparking worries about what would happen if a similar issue hit dominant Geth client.
Many major exchanges and staking services like Coinbase, Binance, and Kraken use Geth to power their validator operations, exposing users’ funds to significant risk.
Experts say Ethereum users often default to the popular Geth client out of laziness rather than evaluating tradeoffs with alternative options like Nethermind and Besu.
Roughly 84% of Ethereum validators currently depend on Geth software to interact with the network and propose new transaction blocks, according to data analyzed by clientdiversity.org.
This level of centralization around a single client creates a worrying single point of failure – if Geth experiences a major bug, the smooth functioning of the entire Ethereum ecosystem could be jeopardized.
The risks came into stark relief over the past weeks after separate issues with Nethermind and Besu knocked a minority portion of Ethereum validators offline. Nethermind powers only about 8% of validators, but a critical bug in its code base forced those nodes offline for a period of hours until patched. Shortly before, the less popular Besu client saw a similar failure interrupt its 5% share of validators.
1/ Execution client diversity on Ethereum is a critical concern for all of us at Coinbase. Here’s what we’re doing about it. ↓
— Coinbase Cloud ????️???? (@CoinbaseCloud) January 23, 2024
In both cases, penalties were imposed on offline validators for failing to properly validate transactions, but Ethereum itself continued functioning due to the low footprint of affected nodes. Experts shuddered at the hypothetical damage if an issue of similar scale hit widely-used Geth instead. In a worst case, millions of dollars worth of ETH staked on Geth could be destroyed, halting the network and undermining trust in Ethereum’s resilience.
Behind the lack of client diversity lies a tendency for new validators to simply opt for the most common choice without evaluating alternatives. “Almost all other chains don’t have the type of client diversity that Ethereum has,” said Daniel Hwang of Kintsugi Tech. “Most are just running on one client.” The convenience of sticking with popular Geth software means few new validators research tradeoffs like security risks despite warnings from the Ethereum Foundation.
That leaves major exchanges and staking providers also leaning heavily or even exclusively on Geth to drive their backend operations. Execution-diversity.info indicates that platforms like Coinbase, Binance, and Kraken all turn to Geth when powering validator transactions for users, exposing customer funds to technology risks. After seeing the data, some major community voices like DCInvestor even pledged to withdraw ETH funds from affected services.
dear @coinbase
today, i unstaked all of the ETH i had staked with you since the first day you offered it as a service. i kept it there to earn passive yield, but also to support your work for the crypto industry (which i greatly value)
but i can’t ignore the risks of what…
— DCinvestor (@iamDCinvestor) January 22, 2024
While a smooth developer ecosystem has made Geth entrenched in Ethereum infrastructure, the network’s resilience ultimately requires embracing next-generation alternatives like Nethermind and Besu.
Ethereum leadership can accelerate this transition by directing attention and grants toward improving competing clients. Allowing diversity to ossify into overreliance contradicts Ethereum’s founding ethos: a decentralized network running varied software personalized for an array of needs.