Vitalik Buterin Says Reducing Validator Stake From 32 to 1 ETH a Possible Future for Ethereum

Vitalik Buterin has floated the idea of dramatically reducing the amount of ETH that’s required to be an Ethereum staker.

In a new blog post, the Ethereum founder notes that it currently takes approximately 15 minutes to finalize a block and 32 ETH is required to serve as a staker.

Buterin says these specs were a compromise designed to find a compromise between three goals: maximizing the number validators that can stake, minimizing the time to finality and minimizing the overhead of running a node.

The Ethereum founder says those requirements could change, however.

“Ideally, we want to preserve economic finality, while simultaneously improving on the status quo in two areas:

1. Finalize blocks in one slot (ideally, keep or even reduce the current length of 12s), instead of 15 min
2. Allow validators to stake with 1 ETH (down from 32 ETH)

The first goal is justified by two goals, both of which can be viewed as “bringing Ethereum’s properties in line with those of (more centralized) performance-focused L1 chains”.

First, it ensures that all Ethereum users actually benefit from the higher level of security assurances achieved through the finality mechanism. Today, most users do not, because they are not willing to wait 15 minutes; with single-slot finality, users will see their transactions finalized almost as soon as they are confirmed. Second, it simplifies the protocol and surrounding infrastructure if users and applications don’t have to worry about the possibility of the chain reverting except in the relatively rare case of an inactivity leak.”

Buterin says the reduction in staking requirements would help support solo stakers.

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