At 13:58 UTC on February 20, 2022, an Ethereum staker who posts as superphiz named two companies1. Coinbase and Kraken held 78,000 of the 296,000 validators on Ethereum's beacon chain, he wrote. Both ran Prysm, then the most popular staking client5. “Their radio silence on an issue that impacts your funds and our network should infuriate you,” superphiz wrote.
A client is the software a validator runs to follow the chain and vote on it. Ethereum has several, written by separate teams. In January 2022, clientdiversity.org spelled out the risk6. If one client runs two thirds of validators and hits a bug, it can finalize a wrong chain on its own. The site set the goal at under 33 percent for every client.
Kraken answered on February 21, 2022, and Coinbase on February 2234. By October 2026, Prysm ran 18.53 percent of nodes12. Lighthouse, a different client, now holds the majority.
The campaign behind the post
EthStaker, a community that promotes solo staking, began a concerted push in late 2021, its own paper says58. On January 26, 2022, clientdiversity.org showed Prysm on 59.47 percent of nodes, from Miga Labs data6. Lighthouse had 24.64 percent, Teku 9.54 and Nimbus 5.11. A January 2022 count by Michael Sproul of the Lighthouse team put Prysm at 68.1 percent, Cointelegraph later reported10.
Sproul also found a way to see which client built each block. He read the order in which a block packs its votes, superphiz's history says5. That method became the tool called blockprint. On February 13, 2022, a member of Rocket Pool's trading Discord released pools.invis.cloud2. That trader posts as 0xinvis and had help from Sproul, superphiz and others. The site showed Prysm use at staking pools such as Coinbase, Kraken and Binance.
The history, first posted on Reddit's r/ethstaker, sits in a GitHub copy that superphiz saved in January 20245. One passage records the moment the data landed. “To be honest, this was a huge revelation for EthStaker because we had just spent the past year trying to get grandma to change her one Prysm validator thinking it would matter,” he wrote.
Kraken's reply came first. “We won't be abandoning Prysm labs completely but rest assured knowing that our developers are looking to diversify,” Kraken Support wrote3. Emilie Choi of Coinbase replied on February 22. "Here’s how we’re thinking about things…" she wrote4.
Both sides, in their own words
Did the campaign make Ethereum safer from a single client's bug?
“To be honest, this was a huge revelation for EthStaker because we had just spent the past year trying to get grandma to change her one Prysm validator thinking it would matter”
“if Lighthouse had had the bug instead, then the network would’ve lost finalization”
What the coverage missed
Cointelegraph gave superphiz one sentence in March 20249. That sentence called him an "Ethereum decentralization advocate" and cited his warning about Geth.
Its December 5, 2025 story on a Prysm bug went further back. Cointelegraph cited Sproul's 68.1 percent figure from January 2022 and the Miga Labs charts10. Its text leaves out superphiz and EthStaker, the campaigners who took the data to Coinbase and Kraken5.
The shares, then and now
By September 16, 2022, the picture had flipped. Miga Labs put Lighthouse at 41.61 percent and Prysm at 36.63 percent7. Teku stood at 14.08 percent and Nimbus at 1.75 percent. Sigma Prime's blockprint still showed Prysm ahead, at 43.7 percent.
Lighthouse kept climbing. The client reached 54.6 percent on June 1, 2026, in the Miga Labs file that clientdiversity.org keeps12. On October 1, 2026, Lighthouse stood at 52.66 percent and Prysm at 18.53 percent. Teku had 7.12 percent and Nimbus 11.62 percent. Miga's Nimbus count swings, from 1.54 percent on June 1 to that 11.62.
Share of Ethereum consensus nodes by client, on eight dates in Miga Labs' counts, in percent
- Prysm
- Lighthouse
- Teku
- Nimbus
- Height: Share of nodes, percent
Read the chart as a table
| Item | Prysm | Lighthouse | Teku | Nimbus |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jan 2022 | 59.47% | 24.64% | 9.54% | 5.11% |
| Sep 2022 | 36.63% | 41.61% | 14.08% | 1.75% |
| Sep 2023 | 40.57% | 34.60% | 11.92% | 8.47% |
| Mar 2024 | 26.71% | 43.05% | 16.88% | 8.66% |
| Oct 2024 | 29.91% | 43.37% | 14.31% | 8.51% |
| Nov 2025 | 22.25% | 48.88% | 12.81% | 10.23% |
| Jun 2026 | 22.97% | 54.60% | 9.09% | 1.54% |
| Oct 2026 | 18.53% | 52.66% | 7.12% | 11.62% |
The execution side moved later. Execution clients run the transactions inside each block. On September 16, 2022, Ethernodes counted Geth on 80.72 percent of nodes7. Self-reported data from supermajority.info showed Geth at 72.79 percent on February 4, 2024, and Nethermind at 11.58 percent13. Coinbase drove part of that shift. On March 22, 2024, it said "roughly 50%" of its validators had switched to Nethermind, Cointelegraph reported9. Geth had fallen from 84 percent in late January 2024 to 66 percent, Cointelegraph reported. By October 1, 2026, Nethermind had 42.88 percent and Geth 42.79 percent.
Share of self-reported Ethereum validators by execution client, on five dates, in percent
- Geth
- Nethermind
- Besu
- Erigon
- Height: Share of validators, percent
Read the chart as a table
| Item | Geth | Nethermind | Besu | Erigon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Feb 2024 | 72.79% | 11.58% | 13.89% | 1.74% |
| Aug 2024 | 55.06% | 27.58% | 14.06% | 3.30% |
| Feb 2025 | 42.66% | 36.39% | 16.39% | 2.61% |
| Jun 2025 | 40.88% | 38.24% | 16.37% | 2.59% |
| Oct 2026 | 42.79% | 42.88% | 8.36% | 2.66% |
That execution data covers 59.4 percent of the network, and clientdiversity.org calls most of it stale11.
The case for the campaign
In his history, superphiz set a high bar. “But here's the thing - we can't stop pushing until client diversity ACTUALLY appears on the network. Even then, we have to keep pushing until no client has more than 50% of the validators,” he wrote5.
The record shows why. In December 2025, right after the Fusaka upgrade, a Prysm bug knocked votes offline, Cointelegraph reported on December 510. Voting fell to 74.7 percent at epoch 411,448. Prysm ran about 22.71 percent of nodes just before, by Miga Labs' estimate. Ethereum stays final while two thirds of stake votes, so the chain held.
EthStaker made the same point about a May 2023 incident, when finality stalled twice. “Had Prysm still been a supermajority, the effects of this bug would have been far more severe for both the network and stakers,” its paper said8. Danny Ryan, then at the Ethereum Foundation, called the mix of consensus clients "a crowning achievement" in February 202314.
The case against
Anthony Sassano, an Ethereum educator, read the 2025 bug the other way. “if Lighthouse had had the bug instead, then the network would’ve lost finalization,” he posted on X, Cointelegraph reported10. Lighthouse ran 52.66 percent of nodes on October 1, 202612. The target in superphiz's history was 50 percent or less of validators for any client5. His bar counts validators, and the Miga Labs file counts nodes.
Lachlan Feeney, founder of the infrastructure firm Labrys, doubted the counts themselves. He told Cointelegraph in March 2024 that Geth needed to move a “decent amount below the 66% threshold to account for any margin of error before we are confident that a supermajority bug isn’t possible”9. Feeney called clientdiversity.org's method flawed.
The live page bears out the doubt. On October 13, 2026, blockprint showed Teku at 99.83 percent11. Miga Labs showed Lighthouse at 52.34 percent, and Rated showed Teku at 53.86 percent. Three sources, three different leaders.
What to watch
Under the bar superphiz set, Lighthouse would need to run under 50 percent of validators5. The Miga Labs file tracks nodes, so watch for a validator count from a second source12. A 33 percent cap for every client remains clientdiversity.org's goal6. Sassano's case gains each month Lighthouse stays above half of nodes.
On the execution side, watch the next supermajority.info update. Nethermind and Geth sat within 0.09 percentage points of each other on October 1, 202613.
Sources
- superphiz, post on Coinbase and Kraken validators, X, February 20, 2022, https://x.com/superphiz/status/1495397371466944523
- 0xinvis, post releasing pools.invis.cloud, X, February 13, 2022, https://x.com/0xinvis/status/1492936618449199109
- Kraken Support, reply to superphiz, X, February 21, 2022, https://x.com/krakensupport/status/1495590333085798400
- Emilie Choi, reply to superphiz, X, February 22, 2022, https://x.com/emiliemc/status/1496256781638840320
- superphiz, "A [hopefully] brief history of client diversity on the beacon chain," GitHub (copy of his r/ethstaker post), saved January 23, 2024, https://github.com/superphiz/topics/blob/master/consensus_client_diversity.txt
- Ether Alpha, "Client Diversity," clientdiversity.org as archived January 26, 2022, Internet Archive, http://web.archive.org/web/20220126142949/https://clientdiversity.org/
- Ether Alpha, "Client Diversity," clientdiversity.org as archived September 16, 2022, Internet Archive, http://web.archive.org/web/20220916204429/https://clientdiversity.org/
- Nixo, Thorsten Behrens and Sam Coffey, "Execution Client Diversity," EthStaker, May 31, 2023, https://paragraph.com/@ethstaker/execution-client-diversity
- Cointelegraph, "Ethereum client diversity improves, non-Geth clients now account for 34%," via TradingView, March 26, 2024, https://www.tradingview.com/news/cointelegraph:ee1b2894f094b:0-ethereum-client-diversity-improves-non-geth-clients-now-account-for-34/
- Adrian Zmudzinski, "Ethereum sees 25% validation drop post-Fusaka as Prysm bug nears finality loss," Cointelegraph, December 5, 2025, https://cointelegraph.com/news/ethereum-prysm-bug-fusaka-client-diversity-risk
- Ether Alpha, "Client Diversity," clientdiversity.org, read October 13, 2026, https://clientdiversity.org/
- Ether Alpha, "migalabs.json," clientdiversity.org data file on GitHub, snapshots from August 23, 2023 to October 12, 2026, https://github.com/etheralpha/clientdiversity-org/blob/main/_data/migalabs.json
- Ether Alpha, "supermajority.json," clientdiversity.org data file on GitHub, snapshots from February 4, 2024 to October 12, 2026, https://github.com/etheralpha/clientdiversity-org/blob/main/_data/supermajority.json
- Danny Ryan, "Reflections 2023," GitHub, February 23, 2023, https://github.com/djrtwo/writing/blob/main/docs/2023-02-23_2023-Reflections.md