Oh, this is easy then:
It is hard to get reliable data on running an Ethereum full node because nobody actually does it. The specs are high and getting higher (
here is an article from 2018). The blockspace is growing
exponentially which will eventually price out everyone but the most dedicated from running their own full node to validate. Plenty of folks run pruned nodes, however this does not allow one to fully validate the blockchain thus largely defeating the purpose. A lot of nodes that people do run are hosted by AWS or other cloud providers due to system requirements (again reducing decentralization)
Because you don't have to validate every single transaction to verify that the rules have been followed. You can use zero knowledge proofs to verify that at a fraction of the cost and time, allowing you to run partial nodes with full security. You bring up AWS nodes like it means a shit, look at these two charts and tell me which one has a more centralized hashrate:
The Cambridge Blockchain Network Sustainability Index (CBNSI) is created and maintained by the Cambridge Digital Assets Programme (CDAP) Team at the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, an independent research institute based at Cambridge Judge Business School, University of Cambridge.
cbeci.org
Ethereum Node Tracker shows statistics of all the nodes running on the Ethereum network. The statistics includes top 10 countries with the highest number of nodes, daily total nodes and nodes types by clients and OS.
etherscan.io
Oh yea, and almost everything that runs on Ethereum runs through
Infura. Using IPFS and 'decentralized' nodes (Many are hosted by infura) to validate the blockchain is great, but what good is it if nearly every single dApp that runs on Ethereum runs through Infura?
It doesn't, you are seriously misunderstanding Infura's role in the Ethereum environment. Read up on zero knowledge proofs.
Now lets talk about the much hailed move from PoW to PoS. Proof of work has been well
explained and has been proven as a method to secure a blockchain basically taking advantage of wherever the cheapest power can be found. This has a number of benefits that aren't being appreciated as they get drowned out by the climate change FUD but that's another topic entirely.
Proof of stake deserves being explicitly described:
All points Vitalik refutes in the linked blog from
2014.
So whoever has the most money controls the network.
Not even close to an accurate description of PoS, if you think a simple plurality is enough to "control the network" you need to do more research, again read that blog post from
2014.
Did you know that 80% of the supply is held by a
relatively small amount of wallets? Note that this can be somewhat deceiving due to how exchange wallets work. You will find similar statistics about Bitcoin due to this. However Bitcoin is not moving to a consensus mechanism that gives power to those that hold the most of the asset. I hope you see how this could be problematic. Proof of stake is literally no different than our current system. Especially shady considering that when Ethereum launched
it was largely premined!
Ethereum was not "largely premined," I was fucking there. This is pure BTC maximalist/crypto boomer FUD that's been long since proven as bullshit.
Vitalik and Consensys have ultimate control of the network. This is clear when you look into the
DAO hack. Vitalik was able to singlehandedly
stop all ETH trading on all exchanges. This is clearly not decentralized in any way shape or form. No single person can (or should ever be able to) do this in Bitcoin. He also decided that ETH "should be money" and it should have a deflationary supply cap. This was not the original intent of the network. I happen to agree that setting ETH's supply cap to slowly decrease or stay steady is a good idea for tokenomics. I'm not fool enough to be confident it will stay that way. ETH monetary policy changes at the whims of a few.
No they don't. They obviously have large influence over its development, but are you suggesting there is someone more qualified, or that they're doing anything secretive? The Ethereum core devs are the most transparent development team in the world.
The "deflationary" supply cap is implemented in EIP-1559, which is only actually deflationary when BASEFEE is > block rewards. I don't know what you mean by just up and deciding "ETH should be money," EIP-1559 solves a much deeper issue of wallets each having to guess the amount of gas needed to include in a block by introducing BASEFEE, and Ethereum was always going to issue block rewards forever/claw back supply via other methods.
Here are a bunch of examples somebody put together claiming ETH is a scam. Running into this is scared me initially as I got into crypto via ETH and still hold everything I bought. I didn't want to believe it, its just a bunch of images some asshole put together. Its probably not all true and some that is true is likely exaggerated. Unfortunately as I took the time to dig deeper I was able to confirm more and more of the claims. At this point I basically think ETH is controlled opposition to try to capture capital as is flees the traditional system and maintain as much control as possible.
You think imgur photo albums are research enough to determine Ethereum is a scam? Jesus.
