Decentralization Post Merge

The Beacon Chain shipped on December 1, 2020, and formalized proof-of-stake as Ethereum's consensus mechanism with The Merge upgrade on September 15, 2022.

What was the Beacon Chain?

The Beacon Chain was the name of the original proof-of-stake blockchain that was launched in 2020. It was created to ensure the proof-of-stake consensus logic was sound and sustainable before enabling it on Ethereum Mainnet. Therefore, it ran alongside the original proof-of-work Ethereum. Switching off proof-of-work and switching on proof-of-stake on Ethereum required instructing the Beacon Chain to accept transactions from the original Ethereum chain, bundle them into blocks and then organize them into a blockchain using a proof-of-stake based consensus mechanism. At the same moment, the original Ethereum clients turned off their mining, block propagation and consensus logic, handing that all over to the Beacon Chain. This event was known as The Merge. Once The Merge happened, there were no longer two blockchains; there was just one proof-of-stake Ethereum chain.

What did the Beacon Chain do?

The Beacon Chain was the name given to a ledger of accounts that conducted and coordinated the network of Ethereum stakers before those stakers started validating real Ethereum transactions. It did not process transactions or handle smart contract interactions.

It introduced the consensus engine (or "consensus layer") that took the place of proof-of-work mining on Ethereum and brought many significant improvements with it.

The Beacon Chain was a foundational component for the secure, environmentally friendly and scalable Ethereum we have now.

Total Deposits, Slots and Distinct Validators

Based on the chart of the daily number of validators and the number of deposits, it can be said that most of the validators have performed the deposit operation only once.

number of deposits and validators started to increase from the middle of October, but after October 26, daily number of deposits decreases every day.

This downward trend can be seen even in the daily deposit amount

In the average deposit volume chart, you can see that every day the average deposit gets closer to 32 ETH

daily number of slots, like the trend of the number and amount of deposits, has started to decrease since October 26

The very first Ethereum 2.0 validator slashing occurred at Epoch 208 for Slot 6668 of the Beacon Chain. As we can see here in Slot 6669’s proposer slashings, Validator 20075 proposed two conflicting blocks for the same slot in 6668.

This proposer violation resulted in a slashing of 0.24 ETH and an exit (Epoch 213 for Validator 20075). Validator 11313 (one of ours!) received the propagated proposer violation message from the whistleblower and appropriately proposed it in Slot 6669, thereby receiving the entire slashing reward of ~0.06 ETH.

Daily Deposits, Slots and Distinct Validators

The first slash happened on the first day of the Merge update, that is, September 15,

and on September 23, it reached the highest number of slashes in the days after the update. that is, 16 slashes in one day

But after that day, except for two slashes on November 1 and 5, there have been no more slashes for slots.

total number of slashed slots is ==23 slots== until today

number of healthy slots is an average of ==7.1K slots per day== and the total number of healthy slots to date is ==405K slots==

highest number of slashes is related to Epoch 148711

Slashing

Conclusion

After the Merge update, total number of unique validators is ==36K== , and total number of deposits is ==38.5K==. this means that most validators only deposit once
total amount of these deposits is ==1.149M ETH==, whose dollar value is ==1.61B USD==
total number of slots after the update is ==2.5K==
The large number of validators compared to number of miners before the Merge update proves that Ethereum is more decentralized than before.
Based on the chart of the daily number of validators and the number of deposits, it can be said that most of the validators have performed the deposit operation only once.
number of deposits and validators started to increase from the middle of October, but after October 26, daily number of deposits decreases every day.
This downward trend can be seen even in the daily deposit amount
In the average deposit volume chart, you can see that every day the average deposit gets closer to 32 ETH
daily number of slots, like the trend of the number and amount of deposits, has started to decrease since October 26
The first slash happened on the first day of the Merge update, that is, September 15,
and on September 23, it reached the highest number of slashes in the days after the update. that is, 16 slashes in one day
But after that day, except for two slashes on November 1 and 5, there have been no more slashes for slots.
total number of slashed slots is ==23 slots== until today
number of healthy slots is an average of ==7.1K slots per day== and the total number of healthy slots to date is ==405K slots==
total number of attestations has been ==44M== since the Merge update date
trend of the daily number of Attestations has been decreasing since September 15, which is increasing again after October 16.

Method

Tables used:

ethereum.beacon_chain.fact_deposits
ethereum.beacon_chain.fact_blocks
ethereum.beacon_chain.fact_attestations
ethereum.core.fact_hourly_token_prices

Analyzed metrics:

Total and Daily ETH Volume of Deposits
Total and Daily Number of Deposits
Total and Daily Number of Validators
Total and Daily Number of Slots
Number of Slashed Slots
Total Number of Healthy Slots
Number of Attestations

Attestations

total number of attestations has been ==44M== since the Merge update date

The trend of the daily number of Attestations has been decreasing since September 15, which is increasing again after October 16.

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