Just how decentralized is Solana, really? (2024)

Decentralization by Region

With over 4436 nodes spread between 43 countries, 203 cities and 480 data centers, Solana is truly a global network. The map above shows the location of all nodes, while the bar charts show the distribution of nodes by country and city.

How have the number of validators grown over time?

In the last 2 years Solana has grown from ~381 staked validators to 1335 today. After a relatively stable start, it can be seen that the number of staked validators has grown consistently over the last two years, independently of market cycles and other external events

Is Solana's Nakamoto Coefficient increasing or decreasing?

Over the same period of time, the Nakamoto Coefficient has risen from 13 to 19. This means that stake is becoming more distributed over time, which is a good sign for the health of the network. The less concentrated the stake is, the more decentralized the network is and more resilient to attacks.

How are staked nodes distributed, by data center, city and country?

Use the controls above to explore the distribution of stake amongst countries, cities and dataventers. Each button toggles how the data is grouped, and you may uncheck all groups to see the distribution of stake between validators. Hover to see full statistics for each tile. You can also switch the value display between share of stake and count of staked validators per group.

How is stake distributed amongst validators?

The stake distribution in Solana is still somewhat top heavy, with large validators run by centralized exchanges receiving an outsized share of stake, however with so many participants the long tail of validators is very long indeed. Since so much SOL is already staked, it is easier to increase the Nakomoto Coefficient by redistributing stake away from the largest validators to smaller nodes than by increasing the share of smaller validators alone - we hope recent trends towards self custody help accelerate this.

Decentralization FAQs

Where is the Solana network located?

As a decentralized blockchain, Solana's network is spread across a total of 43 countries, 203 cities and 480 data centers. The network is currently powered by 4436 full nodes and 1380 staked validators.

What is the difference between a full node and a validator?

Validators are nodes that are staked with SOL tokens and are responsible for validating transactions and blocks, voting on every block to ensure network security. Full nodes include nodes that are not staked and are responsible for serving the network to clients. As every node, staked or otherwise, maintains a full copy of the ledger, the security of the network is not dependent on the number of validators alone: any full node can be used to recover the state in case of a catastrophic failure.

What is the Nakomoto Coefficient of Solana?

The Nakomoto Coefficient of Solana is currently 19. The Nakomoto Coefficient is a measure of the decentralization of a proof of stake network. It represents the smallest number of validators that would need to collude or be compromised in order to prevent the network functioning correctly. The higher the coefficient, the more decentralized the network is.

How is the nakomoto coefficient calculated?

On proof of stake networks, the Nakomoto Coefficient (NC) s is the fewest number of nodes that control at least 33.4% of voting power. To calculate Solana's NC we order validators from largest to smallest by share of stake, then count how many validators we need to reach 33.4% of total stake. This group of validators is also referred to as the 'super minority'.

Is a '51% attack' possible on Solana?

No, it is not possible, as Solana prioritises security over liveness. In the unlikely event of collusion among the superminority, other validators would detect an invalid fork and stop producing blocks, immediately halting the network. This means that it would not be possible to alter the blockchain's state and steal funds, unlike on a proof of work network like Bitcoin.

Sources & Footnotes

Data on stake amounts, nakomoto coefficient and distribution is sourced from on chain data on the Solana network. Stats on the geo location of RPC nodes and validators is collected with thanks from validators.app

We do not have historic liveness stats for validators, so for the chart depicting validator count over time a validator is only deemed active if it has more than 15,000 SOL in delegated stake.