Only a Handful of Builders Might be Kingpins After the Ethereum Merge

• The Ethereum merger poses risks of creating a new class of crypto kingpins.
• Flashbots are already the dominant method for miners to collect fees from merchants.
• Having few builders on the upgraded Ethereum chain, raises the problems.

With the Proof-of-Stake upgrade of Ethereum around the corner, it is anticipated that new members a.k.a builders will be introduced within the blockchain. This transfer, however, poses risks of altering the facility construction of what is arguably the most commercially crucial cryptocurrency community.

Currently, networks of computer systems known as miners pick transactions from a specific information pool and prepare them into blocks that are added to the blockchain. The miners are being eliminated as part of a plan to reduce energy consumption.

Following the merger event, the builders will collect transactions into blocks, which they will then send to the validators. The validators will log out in the order of the blocks that may be included in the upgraded blockchain.

This seemingly geeky change, which is half of the MEV-Boost software program improvement, may make Ethereum more centralized, at least initially. While there are already over 416,000 validators assigned to order transactions, there are only a few members dedicated to serving as builders. The largest is Flashbots, which develops open-source software for trading bots.

Flashbots are already the dominant method for miners to collect fees from merchants by enabling their transactions to run ahead of others. Due to concerns about Flashbots or other similar entities wielding excessive control, other members are considering becoming builders.

“It kills decentralization,” stated Uri Klarman, CEO of BloXroute Labs, which operates a network of servers that allows merchants to send transactions to miners more quickly. According to his conversation with Bloomberg, the community routes roughly 40% of all buying and selling volume from decentralized finance apps, which allow people to trade, mortgage, and borrow money.

One risk is that a highly effective digital wallet, such as MetaMask, which enables customers to trade and obtain crypto, will emerge as a “king maker,” as per Klarman. With 30 million customers, MetaMask is the most popular non-custodial pocket.

Klarman pointed out that a pockets service may favor one builder over all others and even determine to behave as a builder, thus controlling the flow of transactions. The builder-validator role separation was originally intended to increase Ethereum’s decentralization while taking power away from validators.

Having too few builders on the upgraded Ethereum chain, however, raises the possibility of problems. They could prevent transactions from being included in blocks. Flashbots blacklisted Tornado Cash wallets earlier this month, following the US Treasury Department’s approval of the mixer protocol.