Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, has responded to criticism levied at the blockchain in a detailed blog post breaking down three issues core to Ethereum's centralization: MEV (miner or maximal extractable value), liquid staking, and the hardware costs of running a solo node. 

Buterin noted that concerns around Ethereum's design in these three key areas are "widely shared," adding, "They are concerns that I have on many occasions had personally." However, Buterin said, the issues may not be as difficult to overcome as some claim. 

In his post, published on May 17, Buterin first addresses the issue of MEV, or the financial gain that sophisticated node operators can capture by reordering the transactions within a block. Buterin characterizes the two approaches to MEV as …