Solana's network requires significantly more entities to influence block production than Bitcoin or Ethereum, according to new research, but experts caution that raw entity counts don't tell the full decentralization story. A study published by Glassnode and Ark Invest on September 1 analyzed decentralization across major blockchains and found that Bitcoin and Ethereum each need only three entities to accumulate enough computing power or stake to materially influence block production, while Solana would need 19 entities to reach the same threshold.

What Does "Influencing Block Production" Actually Mean?

The research clarifies an important distinction: having enough power to influence block production is not the same as directly controlling a network. In Bitcoin, multiple miners contribute computing power to a single mining pool, so one pool operator doesn't necessarily own all the underlying hash power. Similarly, in proof-of-stake networks like Ethereum and Solana, many users delegate their assets to validators, meaning a validator with a large share of stake doesn't directly own all the underlying tokens.

This nuance matters because it means the entity count alone doesn't capture the full picture of how decentralized a network truly is. A validator or mining pool can have significant influence without direct ownership of all the resources backing it.

How Do These Networks Compare on Infrastructure Decentralization?

The Glassnode and Ark Invest report went beyond block production to examine how decentralized each blockchain's underlying infrastructure actually is. The findings revealed meaningful differences in how each network's nodes are distributed and operated:

• Bitcoin's Node Distribution: Bitcoin's nodes were found to be relatively evenly distributed geographically, and approximately 63% of all nodes operate through Tor, an anonymous communications network that enhances privacy and resilience.
• Ethereum's Cloud Reliance: Ethereum showed higher dependence on cloud services, with about 20% of all nodes running on Amazon Web Services, creating potential infrastructure concentration risk.
• Solana's Data Center Infrastructure: Solana was found to run a substantial share of its network infrastructure through data centers, which differs from Bitcoin's more distributed approach.

These infrastructure differences matter because they affect how resilient each network is to outages, censorship, or targeted attacks. A network where nodes are spread across many independent operators and geographic regions is generally considered more robust than one relying heavily on a few cloud providers or data centers.

Why Entity Count Alone Misses the Bigger Picture?

The report emphasized that assessments of blockchain decentralization should look beyond the simple number of entities involved in block production. A complete picture requires examining mining pools, staking delegation structures, the geographic distribution of nodes, and how infrastructure is actually operated. This means Solana's higher entity threshold doesn't automatically make it more decentralized than Bitcoin or Ethereum if those 19 entities rely on similar infrastructure or are geographically concentrated.

For Solana specifically, the network has been working to improve its decentralization profile. The Firedancer validator client, built by Jump Crypto, launched on mainnet in December 2025 and had reached more than 20% active validator adoption by mid-2026, introducing client diversity to Solana for the first time in its mainnet history. Previously, every validator ran the same Agave codebase, which created a single point of failure risk. Running multiple independent validator clients reduces the chance that one software bug could disrupt all network operations.

Meanwhile, Solana's ecosystem continues to grow despite these structural considerations. The network's DeFi (decentralized finance) total value locked peaked above $12.2 billion in September 2025, though it declined roughly 56% to approximately $5.5 billion by mid-2026 in dollar terms as market conditions shifted. However, when measured in SOL tokens rather than dollars, DeFi TVL crossed 80 million SOL in the first quarter of 2026, reaching an all-time high in native token terms.

The Glassnode and Ark Invest findings underscore a key reality in blockchain development: decentralization is multidimensional. No single metric captures the full picture. Solana's requirement for 19 entities to influence block production suggests a more distributed validator set than Bitcoin or Ethereum, but that advantage could be offset by infrastructure concentration or other factors. As the Solana network continues to evolve with upgrades like Firedancer and the upcoming Alpenglow consensus upgrade, the interplay between entity count, infrastructure distribution, and actual network resilience will remain a critical area of focus for developers and researchers.