Ethereum reaches 1M validators, community thinks it’s ‘too much’

The Ethereum network recently reached the milestone of one million validators, with 32 million Ether already staked, which, at current market values, is worth almost $114 billion.

On March 28, the network reached a validator count of one million, with the 32 million ETH staked making up 26% of the total supply, according to the Dune Analytics dashboard Hildobby designed to analyze Ethereum staking activity.

The information also reveals that the Ethereum staking pool Lido, a liquid staking platform for proof-of-stake (PoS) cryptocurrencies, stakes about 30% of the ETH. Because they enable users with less ETH to pool their assets and participate, staking pools like Lido continue to be popular.

To protect a blockchain from scams like double-spending, which is the practice of spending the same currency twice, validators keep an eye on the network. Validators take part in both proposing and approving transactions on the Ethereum network.

To take part in this process, participants must stake 32 ETH. They are rewarded with a tiny amount of ETH in exchange. Although having more validators could increase a blockchain’s security, some community members believe having too many validators could be problematic.

Proposals to Address Growing Validator Numbers and Network Decentralization

According to Ethereum proponent and venture capitalist Evan Van Ness, there is likely already “too much” staked. A staking pool operator named Gabriel Weide thinks that having too many validators may eventually result in “failed transactions.”

According to Coinbase Wallet’s head of engineering Peter Kim, the number of validators is “impressive,” but “artificially inflated by the 32 ETH cap.”But he hinted that this would soon alter.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin proposed an approach to strengthen the decentralization of the network in light of the growing number of validators. Buterin suggested penalizing validators according to their average failure rate in a blog post that posted on March 27.

Each validation attempt that fails during a certain slot will result in a greater penalty. Buterin suggests that this strategy could reduce the advantage that larger ETH holders have over smaller ones.