Bitcoin Proponent Samson Mow Highlights the Centralization Aspect of the Merger

Mow claims that a few node operators have the power to alter, delay, or even cancel the next Ethereum merge.

Samson Mow, a well-known Bitcoin proponent, recently took to social media to talk about the centralization aspects of the upcoming merger, which he says is not widely known.

Ethereum is in countdown mode following the completion of the Bellatrix upgrade on September 6 and is ready for the official transition between September 13 and 15, depending on the hash rate (power of the computer) on the network. The merge is scheduled to be triggered by a difficulty threshold called Terminal Total Difficulty (TTD) at a value of 58750000000000000000000.

Mow claimed that while everyone thinks the merge will be triggered by the preset difficulty threshold, there is one aspect that few people have paid attention to. He stated that node operators have the power to overwrite the TTD value with a single line of code.

Mow cited a Galaxy blog post highlighting the key centralization issue with the merger and claimed that Ethereum knowingly removed this fact.

So how does the MeRgE actually fire? I was curious so I dug. I thought it could be set with a fixed mechanism or a readiness threshold, but no. Someone, probably Vitalik, will just say "go" and it will happen. Complex masquerade consists in masking centralization. pic.twitter.com/PmxcTMU8J5

He noted that with few important nodes, "maintainers can just 'provide the actual value' for the activation time whenever they feel like it. The hilarious thing is that they then create tracking sites to "predict" when it will happen."

Cointelegraph contacted Mow to get its p...