Are We Decentralized Yet: Coinbase’s Brian Armstrong Tweet Analysis

Brian Armstrong, one of the most important figures in the crypto sphere and CEO & Co-founder of Coinbase, tweeted a link on April the 26th that reads: ‘Are we decentralized yet?’

https://twitter.com/brian_armstrong/status/989712568926195712

The website shows the most important virtual currencies in the market, and gives some information about them.

The page makes a comparison between the consensus algorithm that the cryptocurrencies use, if the miners (or voters) are incentivized or not, the number of entities controlling more than 50% of the voting (or mining) power, percentage of money supply held by the top 100 accounts, percentage of client codebases that account for more than 90% of the nodes, and the number of public nodes.

According to the publication, 6 out of 15 coins are centralized.

Ripple (XRP) is the most centralized coin in the market with 97% of the circulating supply held by the top 100 accounts. Followed by Stellar (XMR) with 95%, NEO (NEO) with 70%, Nano NANO) with 63%, IOTA (MIOTA) with 62%, and Cardano (ADA) with 33%.

The website shows that those miners or voters that are not incentivized, are centralized. Ripple, Cardano, Stellar, NEO, IOTA, and Nano have no incentivized miners or votes.

Other virtual currencies like Bitcoin (BTC), Dash (DASH), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Ethereum (ETH), and Litecoin (LTC) have less than 50% of their money supply held by the top 100 accounts.

Of course, some Twitter accounts have started to complain about the information showed by this page. In the past, there were high expectations that Ripple could be listed in Coinbase. It seems that with these numbers shown by Mr Armstrong, the dream must be postponed.