validator

According to The Defiant citing data from Beaconcha.in, the number of active Ethereum validators has decreased by 2.5% over the past 7 days, to approximately 863,000, while the total amount of staked ETH has slightly increased by 0.08%, reaching 43.74 million.The decline in the number of validators is mainly related to the validator merging mechanism after the Pectra upgrade. This upgrade raised the maximum effective balance of a single validator from 32 ETH to 2048 ETH, allowing operators to merge multiple validators without needing to exit staking, thereby reducing network communication and consensus overhead. Currently, approximately 507,000 ETH are in the merging queue, with an expected waiting time of about 5 days and 11 hours.

Solana real-time application project MagicBlock announced on X that MagicBlock v1.0 has launched on Solana, after approximately a year and a half of development.MagicBlock stated that the application can run in real-time without leaving Solana, proving the fairness of each result while maintaining payment privacy. The team also released the complete documentation for Validator v1.0.

According to CoinDesk, Ethereum developers released version 7.2.1 of the Prysm client on Monday evening, embedding a 200 million Gas limit to complete deployment ahead of the Sepolia testnet testing for the Glamsterdam upgrade on Tuesday.Glamsterdam is the next major upgrade for Ethereum, which will first be activated on the Sepolia testnet, where developers rehearse changes using tokens with no actual value. Part of Tuesday's testing involves raising the Gas limit on Sepolia from approximately 60 million to 200 million.Gas is the unit that measures how much computational workload a single block can accommodate on Ethereum. A higher limit means the network can handle more transactions and more complex activities simultaneously, but it also places higher demands on the computers running Ethereum. Prysm is the client software used by Ethereum validators, and its previous version had completed before this setting was added to the Sepolia configuration. Therefore, validators running the old version will still produce blocks with a 60 million Gas limit unless they manually modify the parameters, which undermines the effectiveness of this capacity test.Validators running the latest version will automatically start proposing blocks with a 200 million Gas limit when Glamsterdam activates on Sepolia at 13:53:36 UTC on October 6. Ethereum has been gradually increasing block capacity to test how far it can go before running validators becomes too demanding or expensive. The 200 million setting is only applicable to Sepolia, and Glamsterdam has not yet been activated on the Ethereum mainnet.

The Ethereum staking withdrawal queue has retreated from last week's peak. After MetaMask began withdrawing validators, the withdrawal queue once climbed to about 851,000 ETH, and is currently down to about 767,000 ETH. Previously, on September 29, the queue was only about 166,000 ETH, growing more than five times in just a few days, reaching about 2% of the total staked ETH of approximately 43.6 million.On September 30, MetaMask disclosed a security incident affecting some of its infrastructure and took the affected validators offline as a precaution. Its update on October 1 stated that the investigation found no signs of impact on wallets or customer funds. In addition to its wallet services, MetaMask also operates validators for the staking service provider Lido. Ethereum security researcher Kaden estimates that this precautionary withdrawal involves about 17,000 validators and approximately 523,000 ETH, although MetaMask has not confirmed this data.Lido expects that as the affected validators withdraw and their balances are extracted, these ETH will gradually be restaked, a process that may take about 45 days. During the downtime, the affected validators will miss out on rewards, and Lido stated that stETH holders do not need to take any action. Meanwhile, the demand for entering the staking queue has cooled, with about 1.5 million ETH waiting to enter, and the estimated waiting time is about 25 days.

Linea's official statement indicates that some validators supporting the Yield Boost treasury are withdrawing as a precaution due to the MetaMask staking incident. Linea emphasizes that the funds and control of the staking treasury itself have not been affected.The impact of this incident is that during the period when relevant validators withdraw and are replaced by new validators, the net staking rewards that provide funding sources for ecosystem incentives will temporarily decrease. Linea stated that it is closely monitoring the situation's progress.

MetaMask has released a follow-up statement regarding the previously disclosed infrastructure security incidents, stating that the team is continuously conducting investigations and addressing the issues.MetaMask stated that to ensure user safety, it has collaborated with relevant partners to take preventive measures and is currently withdrawing the affected validator nodes from its non-custodial staking business. According to the investigation results so far, there is no indication that MetaMask wallets or customer funds have been affected.This morning, part of the infrastructure of MetaMask's non-custodial staking business encountered a security incident. As a precaution, the validators operating on Lido have begun to withdraw.

The decentralized trading protocol Osmosis in the Cosmos ecosystem announced that the maintenance mode of the past few months is coming to an end, and active development will resume. The team stated that the first step is to streamline the core product, including simplifying the tokenomics, focusing on the treasury, and enabling the network to act faster when needed.Osmosis proposed three adjustments to OSMO, all of which will be submitted for on-chain governance. First, further reduce inflation, decrease the circulation of new OSMO, and stop injecting newly minted OSMO into the community pool, making the network rely more on actual revenue. Second, destroy most of the OSMO held by the community pool, as well as the OSMO previously allocated from the community pool. Third, the treasury will only provide liquidity for the core liquidity pool, with a complete list to be published before the changes take effect.The team also plans to reduce the active validator set to 30, stating that a smaller set helps with security incident response and chain upgrade coordination, and aligns with a low-inflation model. Osmosis stated that streamlining the protocol is to prepare for future expansion, as it remains the central venue for IBC asset trading, and seeks community input on the direction of the next steps.

The liquidity staking protocol Lido announced that MetaMask Staking (formerly Consensys Staking) has taken precautionary measures to protect customer assets related to its Ethereum validators after investigating an infrastructure breach incident. The related measures include withdrawing its Ethereum validators from the Lido protocol, which may result in some loss of rewards. If the validators go offline recently to reduce potential network slashing risks, it may also incur downtime penalties.Lido stated that the related validators have begun to withdraw, with the last batch expected to complete the withdrawal by October 7, 2026, but full withdrawals may not be completed by then. stETH holders do not need to take any action. The ETH withdrawn from the validators operated by MetaMask Staking is expected to gradually return to the protocol during the cycle of the validators completing the withdrawal, withdrawing, and re-entering, with the estimated maximum duration of this process being about 45 days due to extended queuing times.Lido reminds that staking operations are non-custodial, and MetaMask does not manage withdrawal keys on behalf of customers. The diversified node operators of the Lido protocol and other security mechanisms, including a temporary reserve of over 6,750 stETH, are designed to control and mitigate disruptions to the normal operation of the protocol. A comprehensive investigation is ongoing, and further updates will be announced separately.

The Cosmos ecosystem protocol Neutron faced a governance proposal that was manipulated by an attacker. The related address spent approximately 20,199 USDC to buy NTRN and staked 31.6 million NTRN about 12 minutes before the voting ended, ultimately allowing the proposal to pass with an 82% approval rate. Subsequently, the management rights of 11 contracts were transferred to the attacker, and they migrated to malicious code, stealing approximately 4.4 million dollars in assets.To recover the funds, Cosmos Hub validators coordinated a chain halt for nearly 24 hours and 48 minutes, and during the restart process, approximately 1.23 million ATOM were transferred from the attacker's wallet to a new address, with plans to return them to the original holders.

F2Pool co-founder and stakefish founder Wang Chun tweeted that Oleksii Trofimchuk filed a lawsuit against Lido Finance and stakefish on September 8 in the Santa Clara County Superior Court, accusing them of allowing competing MEV bots to submit high-priority fee transactions to claim the ETH after his wallet was hacked.

On-chain data analysis platform Glassnode stated that two cities produced more than half of the Solana blocks, with Frankfurt accounting for 33% and Amsterdam for 19%.These two cities have a total of 310 validators, which represents 46% of the total 675 network validators, and 53% when calculated by staking volume.

Core DAO is coordinating an emergency hard fork due to some validators receiving CORE rewards that exceeded the protocol's expected issuance. Core stated in an update that the situation has been brought under control, and "malicious validators" can no longer claim excess rewards. This fork is a forward upgrade and will not roll back the network or revoke any confirmed transactions.Previously, Core indicated in a status update on Monday that the rewards accumulated by a small number of validators were significantly higher than the protocol's expected issuance. The incident was limited to the reward distribution phase, user assets remain secure, and they promised to release a technical review report. Following the incident, several exchanges restricted CORE transfers: Coinbase suspended deposits and withdrawals on the Core network, Bithumb and Coinone suspended deposits and withdrawals, Bitget suspended deposits and withdrawals citing wallet maintenance, and LBank suspended deposits at the request of the project party.Core has not disclosed the amount of excess issued CORE, the duration of the activity, or whether additional tokens have entered circulation, nor have they provided details on the vulnerability that allowed validators to receive rewards. Cointelegraph reached out to Core for further information but had not received a response by the time of publication.

Solana validators have voted to approve the "Dual Deflation" proposal numbered SGP-0002, increasing the network's annual deflation rate from 15% to 30%, while maintaining a long-term inflation target of 1.5%. According to the final voting results, the proposal received 67% support, 25.16% opposed, and 7.84% abstained, with a participation rate of 60.7%. The new plan is expected to bring SOL to a terminal inflation rate of 1.5% in about 2.8 years, while the original plan would take approximately 5.7 years, with an expected reduction of about 18.9 million SOL issued over the next six years.This vote marks Solana's first binding governance process, which also approved the proposed Solana Constitution while rejecting another proposal regarding resource and inclusion fees. The positions of major participants have diverged: the largest voter, Figment, holding 17.1 million SOL, cast all opposing votes, while Helius and Jupiter overwhelmingly supported it. The U.S. exchange Kraken briefly cast an opposing vote at 12:33 UTC during the voting process, causing the support rate to dip below the threshold, but ultimately over 90% of its approximately 8.9 million SOL voting position turned to support.Meanwhile, Bitwise's Solana ETF has surpassed $1 billion in assets under management, becoming the first Solana ETF to reach this milestone. According to Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas, U.S. Solana ETFs have seen a cumulative net inflow of about $1.7 billion since their launch, with almost no sustained outflows.

The Supernova upgrade of MultiversX decouples consensus from execution, allowing the network to reach consensus on blocks before processing transactions. Before the upgrade, block production followed a sequential model: proposers selected transactions, executed them locally, and submitted blocks containing the results, while validators had to re-execute the same transactions before voting, making execution part of the consensus critical path. Supernova changes this order: proposers select transactions and directly propose blocks without prior execution; validators can immediately vote once they confirm the proposal complies with protocol rules, while execution occurs asynchronously in the background, with execution results typically referenced and notarized in the next block header, lagging consensus by about one block (approximately 600 milliseconds).To address the validity verification issues brought by decoupling, Supernova introduces a virtual memory pool state that tracks pending nonces, expected balance consumption, and transactions that have been proposed but whose execution results have not yet reached consensus, providing proposers with a forward-looking account view. Meanwhile, the Execution-Result Inclusion Estimator (EIE) limits the number of execution results that can be referenced in a block based on the capacity that the minimum specification node can safely handle; an automatic backpressure mechanism reduces block capacity when execution lags. Supernova has been producing 600-millisecond blocks on the testnet and devnet since August 20, with the mainnet expected to activate on September 10, 2026.

Cosmos Labs announced that an ongoing security incident has affected users of the Cosmos EVM module. The security and engineering team at Cosmos Labs is actively responding to the incident and has advised validators on the Cosmos EVM chain in contact with them to suspend the operation of their chain.Cosmos Labs appreciates the swift response from all teams using Cosmos EVM and stated that an incident report will be released after the situation is resolved. If relevant teams are using Cosmos EVM and have questions, they can contact security@cosmoslabs.io.

Ethereum developers proposed a "Tapered Issuance Burn" mechanism, planning to gradually burn a portion of the idealized rewards for validators as the ETH staking ratio increases; when the staking amount approaches 50% of the total supply, the net issuance of ETH will drop to 0%. The author of the proposal stated that the ETH staking ratio exceeded one-third of the total supply in April; if not adjusted, Jerome de Tychey indicated that by January 2028, the staking amount could exceed 70 million, accounting for more than 55% of the supply.Supporters believe that excessive staking may cause small independent validators to lose economic viability first, leading to staking concentration among custodial institutions and large service providers; the plan is proposed to be implemented over 18 months, with an additional approximately 6 months reserved for preparation before potential network upgrades. Aave founder Stani Kulechov stated that once the staking rate exceeds 50%, rewards will drop to 0%, and the uncertainty of returns may weaken institutional staking and DeFi demand. He pointed out that ETH lending strategies may be affected, and this proposal is still in its preliminary stage.

Coinbase released its Solana validator node operation report for the second quarter of 2026, stating that its operated Solana validator nodes outperform the network average in terms of yield, stability, and infrastructure distribution.Data shows that Coinbase currently stakes approximately 41.63 million SOL through 23 validator nodes, accounting for 9.72% of the total staked amount on Solana, with nodes distributed across 7 countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, Singapore, and others.Key operational data is as follows: Staking scale: 41.63 million SOL, accounting for 9.72% of the total staked amount; staking yield: Q2 2026 APY is 6.52%, higher than the network average of 6.38%, leading by 14 basis points; block skip rate: 0.035%, lower than the network average of 0.136%, about one-fourth of the network average.Coinbase stated that its validator nodes adopt a multi-client architecture, currently running 4 clients including Harmonic, Jito, JitoBAM, and Firedancer. All solutions have been reviewed by the Solana Foundation, and aggressive MEV time strategies that may affect user experience are not used.In terms of infrastructure, Coinbase has deployed its validator nodes on two independent bare-metal service providers and configured off-site backups for each node to reduce single points of failure risk. At the same time, the company stated that it has migrated the entire validator node cluster to the DoubleZero network, achieving approximately 99.9% session availability.Coinbase also revealed that it is preparing for the Alpenglow consensus upgrade expected to be advanced by Solana later in 2026, including running community test nodes, developing new consensus health monitoring tools, and completing related voting account upgrade verification.

Circle announced that its open blockchain network Arc, aimed at the global financial market, will officially launch on the public mainnet on September 16. It is currently operating on a private mainnet and has attracted over 100 institutional and ecosystem participants. BlackRock, DTCC (Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation), Galaxy, Global Payments, ICE, Mastercard, MoneyGram, SBI Group, Standard Chartered Bank, Sumitomo Corporation, and Visa will participate as genesis validators for network security and governance.BlackRock plans to deploy its dollar institutional digital liquidity fund BUIDL on Arc, while DTCC is advancing the tokenization and settlement integration with Arc, supporting the tokenization of assets held at DTC to Arc for on-chain settlement based on stablecoins. Circle also plans to launch a supporting application framework, AI tools, and tokenized asset issuance management capabilities on Arc.

Ethereum's largest liquid staking protocol Lido announced the launch of the largest protocol upgrade since the V2 upgrade in 2023, which will integrate over 8 million staked ETH (approximately $16.5 billion) and migrate to the new validator architecture following the Ethereum Pectra upgrade. This migration is expected to reduce the number of Ethereum network validators by about one-third, lowering the load on the consensus layer.Lido stated that after the upgrade is completed, the number of attestation messages per epoch across the entire Ethereum network is expected to decrease by about 29%, thereby improving network operational efficiency. This upgrade will migrate professional node operators to the Curated Module v2 (CMv2) architecture. Unlike before, which mainly relied on operator reputation and historical performance, CMv2 requires Lido-selected node operators to lock ETH as collateral for the first time, providing economic guarantees for node operational performance.Lido indicated that all 34 selected node operators are expected to complete the migration, and no operators have exited due to the new collateral requirements. Lido's staking lead Isidoros Passadis stated that this upgrade will streamline the validator set supporting Lido's core staking business while enhancing security through capital constraints. Lido expects that this migration will result in a decrease of approximately 0.28% in annual staking yields for the protocol. Validators will continue to earn rewards before exiting the migration, with any yield loss likely occurring only during the brief period before balances are transferred to the new validators.