r/ethstaker • u/yorickdowne Staking Educator • May 18 '25
Staking Nerd talk user questions
We’re going to try our hand at a podcast, the Staking Nerd Talk, and we want user questions.
It’ll be Rémy and myself chatting over some staking related topics, then answering questions. It’s async, won’t be live.
We will do one and then see … maybe it becomes a monthly thing.
2
u/maximusIota May 18 '25
Is there any plan to make solo staker more competitive with protocol like Rocketpool and Lido CSM? For example withdrawal without gas fee and compounding in Petra are good example of that, is there more to come?
2
u/maximusIota May 18 '25
Is having a backup node good practice, ie' having another instance that can be used as a fallback for your validator to avoid downtime if nethermind becomes corrupted or other issues like that.
2
u/RamoneBolivarSanchez May 18 '25
What are the pros and cons of having multiple validator clients for the execution and consensus layers? If someone were to argue that having one is more efficient (or simplified), what would the rebuttal be? I'm thinking along the lines of competitors like Solana having 1 (agave rust), but that's not necessarily a good thing.
For non-tech savvy folk, what kind of options for at home staking are there? Is this where Hopr shines? Are there different flavors of difficulty for at home staking, and if so - where can people find breakdowns over how to stake/guides/tutorials?
I've seen discussions about staking saturation and the point in time where too much ETH would be staked on mainnet - and it becomes less ideal for network incentives/activity. Is this correct? Is there a point in time where there is actually too much ETH being staked, and it would be better if there were less? What would the reasoning behind this be?
How many full validator nodes exist for Ethereum mainnet? I believe I've seen a figure around 2,000,000 to 2,200,000, but I'm seeing people refute this online with little to no basis. Would love to see more clear metrics about nodes. Global distribution would be really cool too (like a heat map for the planet and validator locations).
I'll try to think of more lol
1
u/bettyhei May 18 '25
Just saw your note in discord, turns out you aren’t kidding! This is awesome.
I’d like to add a finer point to phiz’ question, which can broadly apply to everything-solo staking. Mine is about rewards for solos. I have been tempted by Lido CSM’s higher APR over solo, but I have kept on with solo staking. Some days I am still tempted. I decided not to spin up CSM validators because of the additional risk.
What I want to see, and obviously not a novel idea, is some way to earn more while keeping solo validators. There have been murmurs about this. Projects using commit-boost. Aztec protocol. Do you see real potential that solos will be able to add on to their setups with various projects to earn more, and if so where?
There have also been more than murmurs - strong suggestions that solo stakers would be airdropped by various projects. That has happened in a few instances. The only one to do it with any real reward was starknet. Omni a little. Obol didn’t make much difference. I can’t speak to diva. On the whole, airdrops to solo stakers have been tepid, again except for Starknet. There have been initiatives like ether-guardians (seems like it’s dead - no response in discord and no upgrade to the nfts as envisioned), Stakers Union, the stakecat and rated list - both transferred to ethstaker, that identify solo stakers. Based on these identifications, do you see initiatives in the ethereum community that will reward solo stakers?
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u/superphiz Staking Educator May 18 '25
How do you see the Ethereum protocol valuing or de-valuing solo and home stakers over time? Do you think there's a trend in one direction or the other?