Is Ethereum’s Mining Getting Too Centralized?

Taking a look at the last 24h mining statistics of Ethereum we can see that dwarfpool has almost 50% of Ethereum’s hashrate. In order to prevent any possibility of the pool being able to start a 51% attack users are advised to switch to any of the competing mining pools. Furthermore, dwarfpool is also increasing it’s fee from 1% to a 2% mining fee in order to encourage users to switch pools. The reason Dwarfpool is so popular is because it’s been around since 2013 and is just like Eligius in the sense that it allows for completely anonymous mining.

Chart from etherchan.org

The chances that a reputable pool like Dwarfpool will use it’s hashpower to pull a 51% attack is very low, as it’s in the pool’s best interest to keep Ethereum’s price high, as it will attract more miners and create more revenue for the pool. However, if the pool servers get hacked or land in the wrong person’s hands, then that attacker would be able to single handily take over the Ethereum network and effectively take control over an $800 billion network.

Miners are urged to switch to any of the following pools which do not have nearly as much hashrate as Dwarfpool:

Ethpool

Nanopool

Coinotron

CoinMine

Suprnova

Eth.pp.ua

Miningpoolhub

Weipool

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