[censoredforlife]

No it is not, and as far as crypto is concerned - mainstream media is almost always wrong. This really reads like PR for vitalik.

Eth is great as a developer platform, and it can/does have a future. However, btc will remain the true king because of its decentralized nature.

[computerwizard]

Ethereum has over 4.5x as many full nodes as Bitcoin, how is it more decentralized?

[kbody]

This is a common argument, but the state is quite different.

Ethereum has supposedly 34k nodes, which includes light-nodes which merely hold the last state of the blockchain, that is not a full-node and heavily reduces the trustlessness and security of a cryptocurrency. Light-nodes are closer to an SPV than a Node. I haven't seen any source reporting only full-nodes which would be the proper comparison.

On the other side the number ~7.5k nodes popup for Bitcoin, but that's wrong as well. Those are the full-nodes that are listening for new connections publicly. Not all the nodes of the Bitcoin network.

Following [1] you can see the data from a seed DNS node of Bitcoin, which shows a number closer to reality which is 86k of actual full-nodes.

[1]: http://luke.dashjr.org/programs/bitcoin/files/charts/softwar...

[AlwaysBCoding]

Bitcoin also only has one client with one development team whereas Ethereum has multiple clients with multiple development teams. Tell me more about that legendary Bitcoin decentralization.

[censoredforlife]

Having one or more clients doesn't mean much. Eth is organizationally centralized because of the eth foundation. It literally has a dear leader (vitalik), and no different from crypto issued by, say, the fed.

The entire point of crypto is that it tries to solve the problem with existing currency (fiat), which is too tightly controlled by a few individuals.

[vzcx]

Is this actually solved by bitcoin? Is this actually solvable? I feel we're butting up against the Iron Law of Oligarchy, here.

What I mean is, Ethereum Foundation or not, only some small set of people will have commit access to the upstream bitcoin repository. Additionally, because of economies of scale, it makes more sense to pool resources under one central roof to solve the proof-of-work.

There might be a convoluted and informal political process involved before merging changes to the protocol. Mining companies might choose to limit their size in order to protect the network and thus their income streams. But ultimately, the number of core developers and miners, i.e., those with real power, is much, much less than the number of merchants and users.

[slashrsm]

This! Everyone seems to be forgetting about this aspect, which is very important IMO.

[uncletammy]

> Bitcoin also only has one client with one development team

Nope. See below.

https://github.com/bitcoinclassic/bitcoinclassic

https://github.com/BitcoinUnlimited/BitcoinUnlimited

https://github.com/btc1/bitcoin/tree/segwit2x

[simplehuman]

What are the absolute numbers?

[cgb223]

Why?

That's a big statement. Expand on it.

[censoredforlife]

https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereumfraud

[aarpmcgee]

Careful about predicting the future!

[bowmessage]

nice bitcoin maximalism