Shares of the Get Ethereum network fell by 5% after the threat of a “black swan event” was raised.
Ethereum execution client Gate has seen its market share plummet after community members raised concerns about the network's diversity, with fears that Gate's focus could lead to a “black swan event.”
On January 23, Gate's market share of Ethereum network implementation customers decreased by 5.2% to 78.8% after reaching 84% the day before.
Gate is critical in processing transactions and executing smart contracts on Ethereum, but the choice between Ethereum validators has skewed the balance of execution client diversity on Ethereum.
Supporters of Ethereum decentralization, including a founding member of the ETHStaker community known as “Superphiz”, emphasized on January 24th on X (formerly Twitter) that the error in GATE could lead to the loss of more than 80% of Ether (ETH). ) is installed on the network.
“I'm not going to try to convince you that every implementation client is as strong or mature as Gate. I'm telling you that it's a good idea to use strong clients to prevent a black swan event from happening,” he explained in another post.
In a January 23 blog post, Lachlan Feeney, founder and CEO of Ethereum infrastructure firm Labrys, suggested that Ethereum validators could lose everything.
“Staked ETH is not a risk-free product. Would you invest at least $75,000 in an instrument with a maximum chance of 3.5% pa but a 100% chance of losing?”
“Maybe not, but that's what 84% of Ethereum shareholders are doing today,” Feeney added.
While Gate's current stake is more than 2/3rds (or 66%), Finney said a critical mistake would “immediately stop the chain from being completed.”
In that case, gate validators that go offline are subject to an “idle leak”, which causes them to burn their stored ether until the endpoint adjusts to 1/3 (or 33.3%) network share.
According to Finney, 90% of the provenance's accumulated ether can be cleared within 40 days.
“In comparison, a validator taken offline due to a minor client error that did not stop the chain from completing would lose only 0.4% of its stake in 40 days.”
However, Feeney told Cointelegraph that there will be a “very small window” in which validators can withdraw and limit their losses, as there is a rate-limited queue for how many validators can withdraw each day.
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Nethermind, the second largest execution client, increased its stake from around 8% to 14% on 23 January.
Nethermind's increased adoption comes despite identifying and fixing critical bugs in several of its execution clients that prevented users from making blocks on Etherm two days ago.
Coinbase, one of the largest Ethereum validators operating on the Gate, has announced plans to move to a multi-client infrastructure in the coming months.
He explained that since the exchange Gate began selling Ethereum in 2020, it is the only Ethereum execution client that has met the technical requirements.
“However, the tide is turning,” Coinbase said.
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