Ethereum 2.0 goes live, stirs reaction to possible centralization by some entities.

Ethereum 2.0 has gone live on Thursday as scheduled and successfully transitioned to Proof of Stake (PoS) from Proof of Work (PoW).

The transition known as "the Merge" has been finalized, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin confirmed on Thursday. The new Ethereum consensus mechanism sees a reduction in energy consumption to about 99% 

 However, analysts have raised concern over the increased centralization of the ETH 2 that relatively few entities dominate the Proof of Stake Mechanism now.

Martin Koppelmann co-founder of DeFi platform Gnosis tweeted " The top entities controlling 2/3 of the stake is pretty disappointing to see tbh."

 His tweets show a chart where Lido and Coinbase top the Ethereum staking service as Lido handles more than 27 per cent of stake-based Ethereum validation and the popular crypto exchange platform Coinbase with more than 14 per cent.

As of the time of writing this line, Lido is the largest staker of Ethereum with 4.16 million Eth (30.1%) followed by kraken with 854,400 Eth (6.18%) while the remaining stakers classified as "other," have 3.65 million Eth (26.5%) according to Dune Analytics report.

The transition to PoS stir up the SEC reaction warning that a merged update might turn ETH into security. After the congressional hearing on Thursday, the SEC chair Gary Gentler said that crypto assets and intermediaries that allow users to "stake" will have to pass the Shower Test to determine whether that asset is a security or not. The Howey test determines whether the investors expect a return on the work of third parties.

However, Gensler said that he wasn't referring to any cryptocurrency at this point. But the announcement coming soon post the Merge upgrade could ring some bells, as per the WSJ report 

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