Lido has begun its largest upgrade since 2023, consolidating over 8 million staked ether (stETH), valued at approximately $16.5 billion, onto Ethereum’s new post-Pectra validator design:
This move is expected to reduce Ethereum’s total validator count by about one-third and decrease attestation messages by roughly 29% per epoch, easing the load on the network’s consensus layer:
Lido’s professional node operators are transitioning to Curated Module v2 (CMv2), where all 34 existing operators will be required to post locked ETH bonds for the first time, adding economic accountability:
“This is the biggest change to how Lido Core staking works since Lido V2,” said Isidoros Passadis, chief of staking at Lido Labs Foundation:
“The node operators securing the majority of ETH staked via Lido are consolidating onto far fewer validators, and for the first time, they’re backing that stake with their own capital, leaving the validator set underpinning Lido Core much leaner and better secured.”
