Liquid Staking Giant Lido Moves 8 Million ETH Onto New Validators to Ease Ethereum Network Load

Lido has activated the largest upgrade to its Core Protocol since Lido V2, and it starts by moving more than 8 million ETH onto Ethereum’s newer validator design, the company explained on Monday, in a note shared with Bitcoin.com News.

That stake, worth roughly $16.5 billion, is about a fifth of all ETH currently staked. Node operators will consolidate it from Ethereum’s older 0x01 validators onto 0x02 validators, the format Ethereum’s Pectra hardfork made possible earlier this year, Lido detailed.

For Lido, that shift moves the share of its staked ETH sitting on 0x02 validators from about 32% today to roughly 52%. It also cuts Ethereum’s total validator count by close to a third, once the migration completes.

“This is the biggest change to how Lido Core staking works since Lido V2,” Isidoros Passadis, Chief of Staking at Lido Labs Foundation, explained. “The node operators securing the majority of ETH staked via Lido are consolidating onto far fewer validators, and for the first time, they’re backing that stake with their own capital, leaving the validator set underpinning Lido Core much leaner and better secured.”

Bonds have backed Lido’s permissionless Community Staking Module since it launched in 2024. CMv2 marks the first time that requirement reaches the professional operators handling the bulk of ETH staked through Lido.

A separate upgrade, CSM v3, adds a new operator category called Identified DVT Clusters. It targets verified community stakers who run validators together using distributed validator technology from providers like Obol or SSV. Splitting a validator across independent operators lowers slashing and downtime risk, so the bond required is smaller relative to the stake it backs.

Lido has also flagged a later phase, expected around the first quarter of 2027, that would introduce a marketplace where operators compete for stake based on fees and performance.