9.7 of 10 for Ethereum ($ETH)
Ethereum ($ETH) took the top score, 9.7 out of 10, in an independent decentralization assessment published on Tuesday by William Mougayar of the Ethereum Market Research Center. The study measures four networks against the criteria that the Division of Corporation Finance of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) laid out in a crypto asset FAQ it updated on 2026-11-02. Solana ($SOL) followed at 8.8, $XRP Ledger ($XRP) at 8.1 and Canton Network at 5.1. The scores are the researcher's own: the SEC issued no ranking, and the document the study leans on states plainly that it binds no one. That gap, between a scorecard built on staff criteria and a regulator that disclaims authority over them, is where the two positions diverge.
Mougayar's stated purpose was to test how closely blockchain networks align with the regulatory yardsticks SEC staff have described, comparing them on network governance, centralized control and staking structures. Ethereum ($ETH) earned its strongest marks on governance: neither the Ethereum Foundation, nor software developers, nor any single group of validators can change the network's core rules on their own, and decisions require participation from several distinct stakeholder groups. Under EIP-1559, part of every transaction's gas fee is burned automatically, without the discretion of any central organization, a point the researcher treated as significant. Receipt-style tokens issued by Lido and Rocket Pool for staked $ETH were judged potentially consistent with the asset classifications in the staff statements, provided they meet certain conditions; readers weighing those instruments can compare the options in our guide on where to stake Ethereum. The report makes no Ethereum ($ETH) price call of any kind; it scores governance, not market direction. The full spread:
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What the SEC FAQ Actually Says
The FAQ behind the study comes from the SEC's Division of Corporation Finance and describes factors its staff may weigh when judging whether a network is controlled by a central authority. Restricting participation in the network, selecting validators unilaterally or changing protocol rules at one entity's discretion can each count as central control, while decision mechanisms that rest on a broad, independent participant base point the other way. The document also separates a functional network from a decentralized one: functionality means the network's crypto asset can actually be used for its designed purpose, whereas decentralization turns on whether operational and economic control stays out of a single pair of hands. The SEC adds, in the same text, that the FAQ is not new regulation adopted by the Commission and produces no legally binding result.
Mougayar applied those statements through five assessment areas, one of which the $XRP Ledger could not enter: it has no native Proof of Stake layer, so the staking-receipt area was excluded and its average was computed over four areas. On Solana, the 8.8 reflects a shift toward multiple validator software clients, including the Firedancer alternative, weighed against past operational outages and reliance on specific infrastructure. $XRP Ledger's 8.1 credits the ledger's operational separation from Ripple while deducting for the company's large escrow holdings of $XRP, read as economic control. Canton Network's 5.1 follows from permissioned validator access and permissioned governance, which fit the decentralization criteria only narrowly. None of these figures amounts to a securities classification; the researcher presents them as an alignment read, nothing more.
Whose Criteria Carry Weight
The dispute turns on who holds the pen. Mougayar uses the SEC's staff criteria as a measuring stick, yet the same SEC document says the stick is not a rule, so a 9.7 creates no legal classification for Ethereum ($ETH) and a 5.1 dooms nothing. The method also cuts both ways: because $XRP's average rests on four areas rather than five, the numbers are not strictly comparable across networks. Decentralization has stopped being a purely technical property and has become a regulatory one, a thread running through our Ethereum coverage this quarter. What would give such scores real weight is a final Commission rule adopting these factors, and none exists today. The decision on what decentralization legally means stays with the SEC, which has so far declined to make it.
