Two Leading Mining Pools Produce A Majority Of The Ethereum (ETH) Hashrate


Even if the Ethereum blockchain is meant to be decentralized, the Ethereum network is often viewed as centralized because there are only few influential mining pools calling the shots. Activities in these mining pools account for a majority of the computing power generated on the network. This is why the more influential mining pools get more block rewards and have more miners on their size. While the chances of a mining pool attacking the network are slim, there is still the issue of centralization to deal with.


Sparkpool And Ethermine Control The Mining Network

According to statistics, two leading mining pools, Sparkpool and Ethermine, produced almost half of the total blocks that were generated on the blockchain on the 8th of January. Members of the Ethereum community are especially worried about this issue since the Ethereum Classic network recently suffered an attack and the Constantinople upgrade is going to reduce block rewards.


Ethereum (ETH) Price Today – BTC / USD
NamePrice24H %
ethereum
Ethereum(ETH)
$0.00-2.08%


To keep your mind at ease, the chances of the Ethereum blockchain suffering the same attack as Ethereum Classic are zero to none. This is because the Ethereum blockchain runs at about 200,000 GH/s while the Ethereum Classic blockchain runs at about 9 TH/s. Apart from this, it is difficult to rent hash power on Ethereum blockchain. There is also the fact that Ethereum mining is going to evolve after the upgrade as ASIC miners will be unable to profit from it and would eventually leave the network.


The development community decided to take this action because ASIC miners have an unfair advantage over GPU miners. However, kicking them out is certainly going to leave the Ethereum network prone to attacks from GPU-based facilities. How GPU-based facilities will react to the upgrade will be discovered after the upgrade is complete. Who knows, they may not launch any attack on the network. According to previous developers and community discussions, the Ethereum blockchain was unchanged. This allowed E3 miners to inflate their hashrate.


Ethereum (ETH) Price Analysis


The price of ETH is relatively bullish against the USD and BTC. Right now, Ether is at a crossroad. Hovering above the $150 level for days now, Ethereum (ETH) is expected to spike to $200 soon. Unfortunately, the boost from the Constantinople upgrade has cooled off and the chances of ETH reaching this level is significantly low. The upgrade is scheduled for January 16th. This is less than a week from now. There is still the possibility of a major bull rally above $200 either before or after the upgrade. Many exchanges are already prepared to support the upgrade.


At the time of writing, ETH was trading in green at $152.55. This shows that it is up by 1.67% against the USD and up by 0.61% against BTC. The 24 hour trading volume is $2,406,420,586 and the market capitalization is $15,907,296,986. The price is correcting lower against the USD and may fall below the $150 support if the bulls don’t gather momentum soon.

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