Lido begins moving 8 million ether onto compounding validators

Lido began migrating more than 8 million staked ether onto high-capacity 0x02 validators under Curated Module v2, the largest structural change to the protocol since Lido V2 shipped in 2023. The share of staked ether secured by compounding validators rises from 32.06 percent to 52.21 percent as the migration proceeds.

The effect reaches past Lido. Ethereum's validator set is expected to fall from roughly 880,000 to about 628,000, a reduction of around 29 percent in the attestation messages processed each epoch.

Curated Module v2 also changes the terms for Lido's 34 professional node operators, who must now post their own ether as a bond covering slashing, reward violations and operational failure. All 34 are expected to move across. Stakers need take no action, though Lido estimates a drag of about 0.28 percent on annual rewards during the migration.

Fewer, larger validators cut the consensus layer's message load without changing who is staking, which makes this the cheapest scaling available to Ethereum at present.