Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson has highlighted the centralization of Bitcoin mining in a recent tweet
In a recent tweet, Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson fought with Blockstream CEO Adam Back on centralizing key distributed consensus mechanisms in the cryptocurrency industry.
A plutocratic system
Back has opined that proof-of-stake is inherently plutocratic since decisions are made based on the number of tokens stakeholders hold. The rules and upgrades of a certain blockchain protocol are primarily made by the wealthiest participants, thus creating oligopolistic cryptocurrency systems.
The Blockstream chief, who has been a prolific Bitcoin maximalist, has been vocal about alleged flaws in proof-of-stake monetary and governance models. Back in 2020, Back mentioned this proof-of-stake replicated the “worst aspects” of government-controlled fiat currency.
The centralization of Bitcoin mining
In turn, Hoskinson took aim at the centralization of Bitcoin mining by attaching a pie chart, which highlights the fact that only a handful of mining pools control the entire network.
In a separate tweet, Hoskinson says there are no more individual miners due to the proliferation of highly complicated equipment and the emergence of a highly professionalized multi-billion dollar business.
Some critics believe that Bitcoin has strayed out from what is supposed to be due to such an unhealthy level of centralization. In 2018, Bitmain-controlled mining pools gained control of nearly 51% of the Bitcoin hashrate, which brought them alarmingly close to potentially coordinating to attack the network.
Bitcoiners tend to brush off these concerns, saying that mining isn’t even supposed to be widely distributed because it’s very expensive to attack Bitcoin.
