Staking yields fall to zero, Aave founder Stani questions Ethereum EIP-8361

Odaily News: Aave founder Stani Kulechov published a lengthy post stating that Ethereum's EIP-8361 progressive issuance burn proposal has systemic issues. The proposal aims to gradually burn consensus layer issuance rewards, reducing the net staking yield to zero when the total amount of staked ETH reaches 60.25 million, approximately 50% of the total supply. 

Stani Kulechov believes that the second-order ripple effects of this proposal have not been fully modeled and could damage the foundations of the Ethereum ecosystem across multiple dimensions. He stated that a zero-yield mechanism may exacerbate staking centralization, with home validators being the first to exit due to fixed costs such as hardware and electricity, while non-yield-driven entities like ETF issuers, exchanges, and corporate treasury funds will remain. MEV rewards, which are unaffected by the proposal, would also expand the advantages of top professional operators. 

He also noted that individual stakers could face tax and operational risks. If tax authorities calculate taxes based on the full issuance amount and classify the burned portion as a capital loss, home node operators could experience after-tax losses. With penalty standards for faults remaining unchanged, the node recovery period after a fault could be extended by up to 14 times as net yields decline. 

Stani Kulechov stated that staking yields serve as the pricing benchmark for on-chain ETH interest rates. A decline in yields could cause DeFi lending and fixed-income markets to lose their pricing anchor, potentially driving on-chain capital toward stablecoins offering 4% to 5% annual returns. For institutional investors, predictable yields are a core competitive advantage of ETH relative to BTC. If yields fall to zero while volatility increases, ETH's differentiation in the store-of-value track would diminish. He also pointed out that after the proposal is implemented, MEV's share of total validator revenue could rise from the current 7% to nearly 30%, potentially incentivizing operators to prioritize relay nodes that support censorship, thereby weakening Ethereum's credible neutrality. If an MEV burn mechanism is subsequently added, validator revenue could be nearly eliminated. 

Stani Kulechov suggested that the proposal's authors release after-tax yield assessments for individual node operators, tax opinions from major jurisdictions, and cascade risk models for the DeFi ecosystem, while setting a non-zero net yield floor. He believes that staking centralization should be addressed directly with targeted measures, rather than by suppressing validator yields across the board.