ARK Invest and Glassnode released a joint white paper titled « The Decentralization Spectrum: Design Tradeoffs In Digital Assets, » evaluating Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana across four design features and six quantifiable dimensions. The report frames decentralization as a sliding scale rather than a binary quality, arguing that fundamental architectural choices explain the differences between these networks. Bitcoin prioritizes simplicity and security through proof-of-work, Ethereum balances programmability with decentralization via proof-of-stake, and Solana optimizes for speed and throughput. This approach aligns with the blockchain trilemma, which holds that networks can optimize for at most two of three properties: decentralization, scalability, and security. Institutions care about these metrics because decentralization directly affects censorship resistance, vulnerability to single points of failure, and regulatory risk profiles.
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