Vitalik Buterin Advocates Lowering Solo Staking Requirements for ETH

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has emphasized the importance of reducing the minimum amount of ETH required for individual staking and proposed a solution.

I think there’s a sane version of this where we recognize that 32 ETH is much more of a barrier than bandwidth reqs, and temporarily do a trade where we up the bandwidth reqs a bit and in exchange drop the staking deposit minimum to eg. 16 or 24 ETH.

It’s net-good for both…

— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) October 3, 2024

The programmer joined a discussion initiated by EthHub and The Daily Gwei founder Anthony Sassano. A well-known Ethereum researcher noted that for true decentralization of the network, users should be able to run full nodes at home.

“Solo staking is the beating heart of Ethereum, and we must protect it as fiercely as the value of ETH,” the expert wrote.

In the comments, it was pointed out that this involves quite high entry barriers, including certain technical knowledge, hardware requirements, and the need to lock up a significant amount—32 ETH (~$75,170).

Buterin believes the latter is the most significant obstacle. As an alternative, he proposed a temporary compromise—reducing the minimum deposit to 24 or even 16 ETH, while slightly increasing bandwidth requirements.

Solutions Will Require Technical Coordination and Compromises

Buterin noted that data transfer speed criteria for node operators will automatically decrease following the planned Pectra protocol PeerDAS update.

In the future, the implementation of the Orbit SSF toolkit for solo validators will allow the deposit amount to be reduced to 1 ETH, he added.

“Agree, there are multiple barriers to entry to becoming a solo staker, and hardware is the least of them. Bandwidth and stake are the largest blockers. And treating this as a series of delivery horizons rather than permanent binary tradeoffs is the right approach,” supported a user named Nelson.

Agree — there are multiple barriers to entry to becoming a solo staker in 2024, and hardware is the least of them. Bandwidth and stake are the largest blockers.

And treating this as a series of delivery horizons rather than permanent binary tradeoffs is the right approach.

— Nelson (@nelsonmckey) October 3, 2024

In mid-September, Buterin addressed the importance of individual staking as a factor of network security and decentralization during a speech at the Ethereum Singapore 2024 conference.

The expert highlighted the role of solo validators in preventing hypothetical 51% attacks. Previously, he stated the need to prepare the network for such potential threats.

In July, Ethereum execution layer team lead Péter Szilágyi expressed concerns about the blockchain’s development towards centralization. In this context, he specifically mentioned PeerDAS, which among other changes will gradually increase the size of binary data arrays (BLOB) to 32 MB.

According to Szilágyi, this will impact home stakers and become their “public execution.” Node operators will need a reliable internet channel with a speed of at least 2.5 Gb/s, the developer emphasized.

Buterin disagreed with his assertions, noting that measures are being developed to minimize the negative consequences of updates. Earlier, in May, the Ethereum co-founder supported Szilágyi, acknowledging MEV, liquid staking, and the cost of running a full node as the main threats to network decentralization.

BLOBs, introduced by the April Dencun hard fork, have significantly reduced fees in the L2 ecosystem, especially those based on Rollups technology.

However, this led to a decline in blockchain revenues and ETH inflation. The community has already suggested increasing transaction fees for objects. Buterin noted the increased availability of rollups and advocated for increasing the number of BLOBs in blocks.

Previously, Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson pointed out the excessive reliance of Ethereum’s governance model on Buterin, comparing it to a dictatorship.