Coinbase Emerges as Leading Centralized Ethereum Node Operator

As of March 3, the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase controlled 11.42% of the total staked ether, amounting to 3.84 million ETH. The platform’s number of Ethereum validators reached approximately 120,000.

We’re excited to announce our first Ethereum Validator Performance Report, marking a new level of transparency in our ETH staking operations.

This comprehensive report covers:
→ Validator uptime at 99.75%
→ Participation rate of validators at 99.75%
→ Zero slashing or… pic.twitter.com/UnOtXbZ7zu

— Coinbase Platform (@CoinbasePltfrm) March 19, 2025

Researcher and founder of the educational project The Daily Gwei, Anthony Sassano, noted that this makes Coinbase the largest node operator in the network. While Lido’s collective share is significantly larger (27.2% according to Dune), any validator in the DeFi service falls short of the centralized exchange.

According to Coinbase’s report, an additional 581,500 ETH is staked through partners.

The exchange also reported that node uptime reaches 99.75% against a target of 99%. The participation rate of validators is similarly 99.75%, compared to the network average of 99.52%.

Coinbase’s nodes are distributed across several jurisdictions, including Japan, Singapore, Ireland, Germany, and Hong Kong. The platform utilizes two cloud service providers—Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform.

The platform’s nodes support two clients of each type:

• For the consensus layer—Prysm (80%) and Lighthouse (20%);
• For the execution layer—Nethermind (64%) and Geth (36%).

Coinbase plans to expand the range of software used in the near future.

“In the future, we plan to regularly publish Ethereum validator performance metrics. We will soon also share reports on other major networks (such as Solana),” the platform team stated.

Many users in the comments thanked the exchange for transparency, while some called the data in the report a bullish signal for cryptocurrency. However, some commentators considered such centralization of nodes a threat to the blockchain.

11.42% stake concentration in a single entity raises red flags for network security. Transparency is good, but decentralization is better. We need more distributed validation.

— Mich2dance (@mich2dance) March 20, 2025

“A stake concentration of 11.42% by a single entity raises concerns about network security. Transparency is good, but decentralization is better. We need more distributed validation,” wrote one of them.

Back in 2024, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin identified MEV, liquid staking, and the cost of launching a full node as the main threats to the network’s decentralization.