The Ethereum blockchain runs on several “clients,” or software that runs the Ethereum blockchain inside validating and non-validating nodes.
Unfortunately, despite the huge variety of existing clients, many choose to use just one, which presents a significant risk for Ethereum. Despite many years of calling for better variety, Geth — the original execution client — remains dominant among leading staking infrastructure providers.
Many Clients to Choose From
Ever since Ethereum 1.0 merged with Ethereum 2.0, clients for the former became Execution Clients (or EL), and the latter’s nodes became Consensus Clients (CL). Execution Clients include Geth, Nethermind, Besu, Erigon, and Reth, who are responsible for processing user transactions and smart contract execution. Consensus clients mainly handle staking, including Prysm, Lighthouse, Lodestar, Nimbus, and Teku.
All the different clients in a category are mostly designed to do the same thing. They’re usually made in different programming languages and might have a few optimizations for speed and portability — especially on the EL side.
The question is, then, why are there so many clients? For the most part, it’s an issue of risk diversification, and we’ve seen this play out recently as major bugs affected Nethermind and Besu, two execution clients.
However, there might be one of the reasons people continue to stick to Geth.
The Ole’ Reliable
Geth is the original Ethereum client developed by the Ethereum Foundation. For some time, it was close to the only realistic alternative for Ethereum clients, as its sister client Parity had been largely abandoned (as the company Parity shifted its focus to developing Polkadot).
Parity’s client served as the base for Erigon’s release in 2020 while Nethermind, Besu, and others quietly developed their alternatives. But at that point, Geth’s dominance was already near absolute.
According to Robert Drage, core contributor at SSV.Network, Geth’s dominance has a lot to do with large staking providers:
“Geth is dominant because it is a tried and tested technology that’s been available since the launch of Ethereum. Client diversity is an issue since most of the large staking services have requirements for clients and tend to use ‘the best’ — Coinbase almost exclusively uses Geth.
For large staking operators, using only a handful of clients reduces operational costs, added Drage. With that said, ever since the incidents in January, repeated calls for client diversity reduced Geth’s share of the network from about 85% to 69%. Earlier, similar community mobilization brought Prysm’s share from 70% to about 38% today — nearly equal to the second largest client.
How to Bring Balance to the clients
While some people and organizations may prefer the perceived reliability of Geth, it too isn’t immune from bugs. In August 2021, a consensus bug that had been silently patched threw quite a few nodes running an older version out of the network. Had the bug not been discovered at all, Ethereum would’ve essentially halted.
Reducing the overall dominance of a particular client is important. Still, according to Drage, fault tolerance should be built into the infrastructure. SSV.Network urges its users to split their stake between multiple operators, each using a different client, which is made possible by its unique Distributed Validator Technology (DVT) architecture.
“SSV is an agnostic protocol which allows users to pick their parameters based on their needs,” Drage explained. “When choosing node operators to operate your validator it is advised that each node operator has different EL/CL clients to ensure maximum distribution to reduce single points of failure like client bugs, but also infrastructure and jurisdictional risks.”
According to SSV, their users had near perfect staking performance during the epochs affected by the bug thanks to its small-scale diversification. With DVT, it becomes possible for single users to run all clients at the same time, ensuring they don’t reduce their performance during potential downtimes.
Between social calls for diversification and new technology, the issue of client diversity in Ethereum is improving. However, fixing it entirely requires large staking organizations to switch to more decentralized operations, which will likely take much longer than many in the Ethereum community would like.
Also Read: Staking Rates on Ethereum Blockchain Continue to Speed up
Conclusion
The centralization of client use within the Ethereum network, primarily around Geth, exposes the blockchain to significant risks associated with software bugs. Despite the variety of available clients designed to diversify risk and enhance the network’s resilience, the preference for Geth by large staking operators due to its reliability and lower operational costs has led to a lack of client diversity.
This situation has made Ethereum vulnerable to potential failures that could disrupt the network. Efforts to mitigate these risks, such as the push for client diversification and the adoption of Distributed Validator Technology by platforms like SSV.Network, have shown promise in reducing reliance on a single client.
However, achieving a balanced distribution of clients requires a shift in the operational strategies of major staking entities, a change that demands time and collective action within the Ethereum community.
