Gavin Anderson: Ethereum will not replace Bitcoin, but it is more decentralized

Gavin Andresen, former Bitcoin Core lead developer, recently made some comments comparing the development of Ethereum and Bitcoin, and he explained this.

Many people interpreted his statement as a prediction that Ethereum would replace Bitcoin as the world’s preeminent cryptocurrency, but that was not what he actually meant.

Ethereum shows that large blockchains can remain decentralized

In a conversation with Bitcoin.com, Andresen further clarified his comments by saying that Ethereum is an example of how a more flexible protocol can remain decentralized.

One of the main arguments for scaling is the issue of network centralization. Larger blocks require more bandwidth and storage space, which can cause many nodes to stop running.

Anderson believes this view is wrong, and that people run full nodes for different reasons. He has previously said that Bitcoin will not suffer from an increase in block size.

He said that like Ethereum, it showed people that a larger blockchain could remain decentralized, and he was surprised to find that Ethereum has 6,000 nodes (approximately) compared to Bitcoin's 5,000.

Currently, the size of the Bitcoin blockchain is 84.9GB, while Ethereum is smaller but growing faster, and was created five years after Bitcoin. Some Ethereum clients cut the Ethereum blockchain to reduce its size.

Ethereum will not replace Bitcoin

Ethereum's openness and wider use cases maintain people's enthusiasm for it.

“If I’m correct and the number of nodes has nothing to do with the size of a blockchain (it just reflects how useful it is to people for various purposes), then next year Ethereum will appear to be more decentralized than Bitcoin (as measured by the number of nodes), even if the size of the Ethereum blockchain exceeds that of Bitcoin.”

Anderson's comparison does not deny the strength of Bitcoin, nor does it deny its status as the world's most popular cryptocurrency.

“I’m not saying Bitcoin is going to die, or that Ethereum is going to replace Bitcoin as the world’s top cryptocurrency,” Anderson said. “5,000 nodes is enough. Even if Ethereum has 100,000 nodes, it won’t have much of an impact. The average person won’t know or care how many nodes are relaying or verifying their transactions.”

Anderson went on to say that even if the Bitcoin network only had 1,000 nodes and existed in only 50 countries, it would be decentralized enough that the threat of a government forcing ISPs to refuse to serve Bitcoin nodes would be small, and 1,000 nodes would be enough to combat that.

Other cyber threats

He said the bottom layer of the Internet technology stack is more centralized and vulnerable. Those who are worried about the risk should look at the Domain Name System and the Internet Edge Gateway Protocol backbone. The risk they are worried about is actually small.

Andresen pointed out in May that no widely used Internet protocol has a hard limit on the size of Bitcoin. Although the Internet Edge Gateway Protocol also has a specific transmission limit, it is different from the limit of Bitcoin.

Anderson is still thinking about future roles

Although Andresen is no longer actively contributing to Bitcoin Core, he still has a lot of influence in the cryptocurrency world. In the past, he has been a vocal opponent of the 1MB block limit, saying that the blockchain is more congested than people realize.

A few months ago, other Core developers revoked Andreessen’s Bitcoin Core commit access (and also revoked developer Jeff Garzik’s commit access) for cryptic and controversial reasons, saying that Andreessen was “brainwashed” into believing that Wright was Satoshi Nakamoto after coming into contact with Craig Wright.

Anderson did not receive any official notification of who revoked his access, nor was he given a real reason for doing so. He said Core has some great programmers, but the team should think more about programming, community and communication.

Anderson is currently considering how (or if) he still wants to play an active role in Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies.

“There are a lot of smart people doing interesting things, which is fantastic, and I enjoy being able to stop and think about what kind of role I want to play.”