165 Billion Dollar Level ETH Staking Migration Begins: Lido Plans to Reduce Validators by One-Third

Odaily Odaily News Lido has initiated its largest upgrade since V2 in 2023, migrating over 8 million stETH, worth approximately $16.5 billion, to a new validator architecture post-Ethereum Pectra. This migration is expected to reduce the total number of validators by about one-third and decrease attestation messages per network epoch by roughly 29%, aiming to lower consensus layer load without directly impacting gas fees or transaction speed. This upgrade transitions the existing 34 professional node operators to Curated Module v2, requiring them for the first time to post ETH bonds, taking economic responsibility for node performance and security with their own funds. Lido estimates that this migration will slightly lower the protocol's overall annualized staking yield by approximately 0.28%.