Ex-BlackRock Exec Defends Ethereum as Solana Validators Fall
Former BlackRock executive Joseph Chalom cited Ethereum’s more than 900,000 validators and roughly one million developers after Solana’s validators fell to about 800.
On Wednesday, former BlackRock executive Joseph Chalom defended Ethereum’s decentralization, pointing to the network’s node and developer counts after Solana’s validator total dropped to about 800.
Data from Electric Capital shows 1,012,824 unique contributors have built on Ethereum over its lifetime, with roughly 232,000 active in the prior 12 months. Ethereum is secured by more than 900,000 independent validators that stake ether to confirm transactions.
Solana’s validator set has shrunk since 2023. Network operators introduced a pruning process in 2025 that reduced roughly 2,500 validators to around 800, a decline of about 68% over three years. About 92% of remaining Solana validators run a single client implementation.
Chalom, co-chief executive of corporate ether treasury manager Sharplink and former head of digital assets strategy at BlackRock, used those figures to argue that large institutions weigh decentralization and neutrality when evaluating blockchains. He described Ethereum as the default platform for tokenization and programmable finance and attributed that position to its large pool of contributors and node operators.
Sharplink reported holding 886,725 ETH as of late June and has funded research efforts connected to the Ethereum community, including support for Ethlabs. The firm’s holdings give it direct financial exposure to Ethereum’s network health.
Supporters of Solana say a smaller validator set and higher throughput better serve consumer-facing applications and high-frequency trading. Some network operators characterized the 2025 pruning as a quality control step to remove underperforming or non-contributing nodes.
Ethereum’s development process uses open improvement proposals drafted across a broad research community and encourages multiple independent client implementations to reduce the risk of a single software bug affecting the chain.
Chalom argued, “Ethereum has a million contributors and a million validators. Solana has less than 800 validators and 92% running on one client. Just look at the scoreboard again.” He added that his experience at BlackRock shaped his view of how institutional allocators assess those trade-offs.
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