Ethereum client diversity improves, with non-Geth client market share rising to 34%

With Coinbase recently switching half of its validators to Nethermind, Ethereum’s main execution client Geth’s market share has dropped to 66% from 84% in late January. Reducing reliance on Geth could help address Ethereum’s long-worried centralization risks, with concerns that critical vulnerabilities in execution clients with 66% or more share could prevent the chain from finalizing. On March 22, Coinbase Cloud revealed that “approximately 50%” of validators switched to Nethermind, boosting the execution client’s share to 22%, according to Client Diversity. Additionally, Besu has a 10% share of Ethereum validators, while Erigon, also backed by Coinbase, has a 2% share, bringing the total share of the minority clients to around 34%. Lachlan Feeney, founder and CEO of Ethereum infrastructure company Labrys, believes that “we can’t declare victory yet.” Feeney claimed that the method used by Client Diversity to obtain the data was flawed and that Geth needed to "drop it below the 66% threshold before we can be confident that a supermajority of vulnerabilities are unlikely to account for any margin of error." Feeney added that a "real victory" would only be declared if no single client controls more than 33% of the market. (Cointelegraph) According to news earlier today, Coinbase Cloud recently posted on the X platform that it has completed initial deployment and currently about 50% of its validators are running on the Nethermind software.