Glossary
Nakamoto Coefficient
A decentralization metric counting the minimum number of independent entities that would have to collude to control or halt a blockchain's consensus.
The Nakamoto coefficient measures how concentrated control over a blockchain really is: it is the smallest number of validators, miners, or staking pools whose combined share crosses the threshold needed to compromise the network — typically 33% to halt finality or 51% to rewrite history. A higher number means power is spread across more independent parties, so collusion or coercion is harder.
The metric is popular because it reduces a messy question into a single comparable figure, but it has limits: it usually counts only one axis (such as stake weight) and can hide shared infrastructure, common clients, or entities that look separate on paper yet answer to the same operator.