Decentralization is widely recognized as a crucial characteristic of blockchains that enables them to resist malicious attacks such as the 51% attack and the takeover attack. Prior research has primarily examined decentralization in blockchains employing the same consensus protocol or at the level of block producers. This paper presents the first individual-level measurement study comparing the decentralization of blockchains employing different consensus protocols. To facilitate cross-consensus evaluation, we present a two-level comparison framework and a new metric. We apply the proposed methods to Ethereum and Steem, two representative blockchains for which decentralization has garnered considerable interest. Our findings dive deeper into the level of decentralization, suggest the existence of centralization risk at the individual level in Steem, and provide novel insights into the cross-consensus comparison of decentralization in blockchains.

翻译：去中心化被广泛认为是区块链抵抗51%攻击和接管攻击等恶意攻击的关键特性。先前的研究主要考察采用相同共识协议的区块链或在区块生产者层面的去中心化程度。本文首次提出个体级测量研究，比较采用不同共识协议的区块链的去中心化特性。为促进跨共识评估，我们提出了一个双层比较框架和新型度量指标。我们将所提出的方法应用于以太坊和Steem这两个去中心化特性备受关注的代表性区块链。研究结果深入揭示了去中心化的深层特征，表明Steem在个体层面存在中心化风险，并为区块链去中心化的跨共识比较提供了创新性见解。