Ethereum

Cross-posting a thought on staking from the other app:

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Perhaps we should recognize that 32 ETH is much more of a barrier for stakers 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 staking accessibility and scale. Then once we figure out peerdas, bandwidth reqs go back down, and once we figure out orbit SSF, the deposit minimum can drop to 1 ETH.

While we are in the subject of staking, when the Pectra update is done (I know it's sounding like it will be a 2 piece update), won't increasing the amount of ETH allowed per node lower the number of nodes out there? Doesn't that run counter to the (I assume) goal you have with this bandwidth/ETH tradeoff you are suggesting in this cast?

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The MaxEB change you are referring to is meant to decrease the number of validators and thus the P2P load.

Presumably, the decrease in validator count from it will be large (e.g., from all the institutional and LST operators looking to consolidate their many nodes), and greater than the number of new stakers if the minimum balance is lowered.

But that’s just an assumption, it would be worth looking at how many retail wallets have >24 and <32 ETH (native or LAT equivalent) to refine it.

Being a home staker myself, I think it wouldn’t be worth staking with <32 ETH, because the consensus/attestation rewards (not counting the increasingly rare proposals) would be too small to justify buying and maintaining a node (such as a NUC).

So I wouldn’t be surprised if lowering the floor turned out to be not that attractive to new stakers

PhD in aviation ∩ climate science | Aviator, diver, ETH maxi, nexialist | Host of /diving /ethfinance /eth-staker /geopolitics /science /singapore /thomas

People risk, running free TOR nodes.

Even $1 per day would be enough to some people.

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Maybe, but I think that’s marginal. I’ve personally been running a Bitcoin node, an Ethereum node (pre-PoS), a TOR node, and an Atlas probe for years, all pro bono. But my only cost was light OpEx and minimal maintenance time. It now feels qualitatively different running a PoS validator because there is far more CapEx involved, and uptime requirements (translating into more serious twice-monthly maintenance).

Sure, the offline penalties are small. My point is the duties of running a validator are hardly worth it for a single sub-32 ETH stake with an APY well below WACC.

Regardless of how much I stake, the minimum set of duties is the same: I need to run and occasionally upgrade a $1K NUC, upgrade the CL/EL ideally twice monthly (the current release cycle), ensure adequate bandwidth and troubleshoot connectivity issues, maintain the security of my node and private key, have a remote access plan for when I travel for a prolonged period, have a legacy plan in case I pass away and my spouse has no idea what to do, etc.

The time and effort investment is not necessarily huge (I don’t want to turn off potential stakers), however it also remains constant with a larger stake, whereas the returns increase linearly.

None of this matters if I just run an ETH or BTC node or a TOR relay. That’s involvement but not commitment.

In preparing an eggs-and-bacon breakfast, the chicken is involved, but the pig is committed!

I would argue the “offline” tracking is not a big deal. 

One day of offline is the same as one day of rewards. It’s really small. It’s not like e.g. 30 days of rewards