ARK-Glassnode Report: Bitcoin And Ethereum Require Only Three Colluding Entities To Breach Key Security Thresholds, Solana Needs 19

ARK Invest and Glassnode have published a joint research report examining the decentralization architectures of the three largest blockchain networks — Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana. Titled The Decentralization Spectrum: Design Tradeoffs in Digital Assets, the report moves away from treating decentralization as a binary label, instead positioning each network along a measurable continuum defined by four design features: auditability, security, governance, and ownership. A six-dimension quantitative scoring framework, drawing on Glassnode on-chain data and a range of network sources, underpins the analysis.

The central argument is that every architectural decision — from block size to staking model — places a network at a specific point on a spectrum, and that position carries deliberate tradeoffs. A high-throughput payment network and an institutional settlement layer, the report notes, are designed to sit at different points on that spectrum. Averaging scores across all six dimensions produces a clear ranking, with Bitcoin leading on overall decentralization, Ethereum occupying the middle ground, and Solana prioritizing performance and coordination speed over distributed control.

Control Thresholds, Infrastructure Geography, and Scoring Methodology

On the security dimension, the report quantifies what it calls the critical control threshold — the minimum number of independent entities that would need to collude to meaningfully alter each ledger. Bitcoin and Ethereum each cross that threshold at just three entities, while Solana requires 19. The authors are careful to note, however, that mining pool and staking delegation structures complicate any direct equivalence between this metric and actual operational control. The report also highlights an asymmetry in exit fluidity: a Bitcoin miner can liquidate a 1% network position in roughly 30 seconds by powering down hardware, while the equivalent unstaking process on Ethereum can extend to weeks during periods of network stress.

Geographic and infrastructure distribution reveal further divergences. Bitcoin has the most balanced physical node footprint of the three, with approximately 63% of its nodes operating via Tor — a configuration that provides meaningful resistance to coordinated coercion. Ethereum shows a notable concentration in cloud infrastructure, with roughly 20% of its nodes hosted on AWS alone. Solana’s validator infrastructure is operated almost entirely within data centers, a design choice that supports performance but consolidates physical exposure.

The six scored dimensions — ownership distribution, exit fluidity, network verification overhead, critical resilience threshold, blockchain reconstruction overhead, and geographic and provider resilience — show no single network leading across the board. Bitcoin scores highest on auditability, ownership distribution, and geographic resilience. The full report includes a methodology appendix alongside governance case studies spanning Bitcoin’s SegWit upgrade and Solana’s SIMD-228 proposal.

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