ARK Invest and Glassnode study compares Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana decentralization

A joint study by ARK Invest and Glassnode, titled ‘The Decentralization Spectrum: Design Tradeoffs in Digital Assets’, compares the decentralization, security, and performance of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana.

Bitcoin was ranked as the most decentralized across several measures, including auditability, ownership distribution, and geographic resilience. Notably, 63% of its measured nodes operate anonymously through Tor networks. However, the study found a Nakamoto coefficient of three for Bitcoin, meaning three mining pools—Foundry USA, AntPool, and F2Pool—could collectively exceed the 51% hash-rate threshold. Researchers noted that these pools coordinate block construction but do not necessarily own the underlying hardware.

Ethereum also showed a Nakamoto coefficient of three, where three staking entities could exceed the 33% critical threshold. The report highlighted that Ethereum hosts approximately 49% of its execution-layer nodes in cloud environments, with 20% utilizing Amazon Web Services.

In contrast, Solana demonstrated a higher Nakamoto coefficient of 19, though much of its infrastructure operates within commercial data centers. The researchers concluded that no single blockchain leads in every category, as each network makes distinct trade-offs between decentralization, security, and performance.