The cryptocurrency market has grown significantly in the past few years due to its high decentralization, security, and throughput compared to traditional financial systems. Bitcoin's (BTC) decentralization has largely been achieved through its proof-of-work (PoW) consensus method, which allows anybody to participate in the mining process.
The altcoin industry- led by Ethereum (ETH), and Solana (SOL) – has taken the decentralization process a notch higher by lowering the initial cost of capital investment through their proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus method.
However, some altcoins are still struggling to achieve high decentralization as the founding team continues to control the lion's share of the network. For instance, Ripple Labs controls nearly 50 percent of the XRP total supply, thus giving the blockchain payment company a huge advantage over the secondary market.
Top Centralized Altcoins in Terms of First Ten Largest Holders
The Ethereum ecosystem is the most affected by the high centralization of its DeFi projects. According to a research study conducted by market intelligence platform Santiment, Ethereum's scaling solution Polygon (MATIC) leads the altcoin industry in centralization.
Specifically, the top ten largest MATIC holders control about 69.4 percent of the total supply.
Ethereum's top DEX Uniswap (UNI) is also heavily centralized, with the largest ten addresses controlling 50.8 percent of the total supply.
Meanwhile, Ethereum's leading meme coins Shiba Inu (SHIB) and Pepe (PEPE) have the top ten largest holders controlling about 61.2 percent and 46.2 percent respectively.
Market Impact
The rising level of centralization in the altcoin ecosystem has heavily impacted mainstream adoption. Investors are worried about early adopters, who include insider traders and founding members, dumping into the secondary market.
Nonetheless, viewing the crypto space as a liberal market could mean high demand for altcoins by whale traders, who mostly tend to be long-term holders.