validators

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.

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.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin published the proposal "The Extremely Lean Chain," demonstrating how to radically compress the state requirements of the Ethereum consensus chain in the context of the "Lean" upgrade. This plan shifts responsibility to validators, who manage and periodically prove their state through ZK proofs, thereby eliminating the processing burden for each epoch and potentially supporting millions of validators.The core mechanisms include: removing the validator public keys from the on-chain state, storing only the deposit tree index; canceling real-time reward and penalty processing, with validators generating daily STARK proofs of their participation and updating balances; completely re-randomizing validator identities daily, achieving strong anonymity through ZK-STARK, with withdrawal addresses exposed only at the time of withdrawal and not publicly linked to deposits or on-chain activities. Vitalik stated that based on upgrades such as single-slot finality and quantum-resistant signature aggregation, the state requirement per validator could be compressed from approximately 180 bytes to 6 bytes. The daily proof cost for a single validator requires processing about 5400 Merkle branches, which can be completed within 1 hour on ordinary hardware, and the on-chain burden can be reduced through aggregated proofs. Additionally, this design can achieve a "virtually free" single secret leader election function, with 1 day as the conservative cycle length and 1 hour as the lower limit.

Sharplink Co-CEO and former Blackrock executive Joseph Chalom stated that Ethereum has over 900,000 validators and more than 1,000,000 developers, possessing a decentralization advantage that Solana cannot match.Data from Electric Capital shows that 1,012,824 developers have contributed code to Ethereum, with approximately 232,000 remaining active over the past 12 months.Chalom noted that Solana has fewer than 800 validators, with 92% running on the same client. Data shows that Sharplink held 886,725 ETH as of late June.

According to CoinDesk, the Ethereum research forum has released a new proposal introducing the "validator redirect revenue" mechanism, allowing validators to redirect 0% to 10% of staking rewards to fund ecosystem infrastructure and public goods. If a majority of validators support a certain percentage, that percentage will be enforced for all validators. Based on current staking levels, a redirect of 5% to 10% could bring approximately 50,000 to 70,000 ETH to the ecosystem each year, equivalent to about 120 million dollars.The proposal aims to address the long-standing "free-rider" problem in Ethereum, but it has also raised concerns about the risks of validators jointly manipulating the flow of funds and the misalignment of interests between staking operators and ETH holders. The proposal is currently still in the discussion phase and has not yet entered the formal voting process.

According to Coindesk, Bittensor developers have submitted a new proposal called "Root Reborn," which aims to change the revenue distribution mechanism for Root network stakers.Currently, the revenue for Root network stakers is paid by selling subnet tokens for TAO, which continues to create selling pressure on subnet tokens. The new proposal will allow validators to actively choose a combination of supported subnets and reinvest the revenue originally intended for sale into these subnets, forming a basket of assets that compounds over time.This move will convert the ongoing selling pressure into net buying demand for subnet tokens, while transforming validators from passive revenue channels into active selectors similar to fund managers. Stakers will still receive revenue and can exchange subnet assets for TAO at any time.The proposal has currently only been submitted to the testnet and has not yet been deployed to the mainnet. It is reported that TAO has dropped 28% in the past 12 months, and the current annualized yield for Root network staking is approximately 17%.

According to CoinDesk, Tom Lee, Head of Research at Fundstrat and Chairman of Bitmine, stated at the Proof of Talk conference in Paris that he expects Ethereum to eventually reach $250,000, with artificial intelligence and tokenization driving significant changes in financial infrastructure. Lee pointed out that with the arrival of the machine-to-machine economy, Ethereum will transition from a speculative digital asset to a major global currency for payment automation and computational processing power.Bitmine recently acquired 111,942 ETH, increasing its holdings to nearly 5.4 million ETH, accounting for about 4.47% of the circulating supply. Lee stated that Bitmine is now eligible for inclusion in the Russell 1000 index, with its staking model outperforming holding spot ETH. He believes that enterprise validators will replace the shrinking Ethereum Foundation as key managers of the network, with corporate entities currently jointly controlling 7% of Ethereum's circulating supply.Lee mentioned that if Ethereum achieves the $250,000 target, Bitmine's stock price will reach $5,000. He also noted that the current bearish sentiment indicates the market bottom for Bitcoin and Ethereum, suggesting that selling during bearish times is akin to selling at the bottom.

Polkadot posted on X that OpenGov is voting on significant changes to the network staking architecture. Referendum 1890 proposes that validators on Polkadot must lock at least 10,000 DOT as self-staking.This reform is a mandatory prerequisite for the next phase of staking upgrades, which include immunity from slashing for nominators and quick unbonding (approximately 24-48 hours instead of 28 days). The logic is to allow validators to absorb slashing risks directly through significant self-staking exposure, while nominators can continue to earn staking rewards without exposing their principal. If passed, Polkadot staking will eliminate two major barriers to participation, thereby reducing the risk for nominators and shortening exit times.

According to Theblock, institutional payment giants Visa and Stripe, as well as Zodia Custody under Standard Chartered Bank, have become early validators of Tempo.It is reported that Tempo is an Ethereum-compatible Layer 1 built for high-throughput payments and stablecoin settlements. The project is incubated by Stripe and Paradigm and launched on a private testnet in September. At the same time, Tempo also launched a proxy payment protocol aimed at enabling transactions through software proxies.

According to The Block, Ethereum researchers are exploring the "Block-in-Blobs" proposal (EIP-8142), which plans to encode block execution load data into Blobs. Validators can verify data existence through Data Availability Sampling (DAS) without needing to download the complete dataset, reducing bandwidth pressure and improving scalability.In the zkEVM scenario, this proposal can also fill the gap where zero-knowledge proofs cannot guarantee data availability and aims to unify execution Gas and Blob data usage into a single "data Gas" system.In addition, Biconomy, in collaboration with the Ethereum Foundation, proposed ERC-8211, which supports executing multiple operations in sequence under a single signature to reduce failed transactions and optimize the DeFi interaction experience.

According to the official blog, Circle's institutional-grade blockchain Arc has released a phased upgrade roadmap for post-quantum cryptography (PQ), planning to introduce post-quantum signature schemes at the launch of the mainnet, gradually covering full-stack layers such as private state protection, infrastructure hardening, and validator authentication.The Arc mainnet will support post-quantum signatures from the outset, using an opt-in mechanism that does not require mandatory migration or a full network reset, allowing users to independently create wallets with long-term security. The recent goal is to extend quantum resistance to the private virtual machine (VM) layer, protecting private balances, private transactions, and private payees, with public keys additionally encapsulated in a symmetric encryption layer under privacy mode.The mid-term plan is to advance the upgrade of the infrastructure layer, aligning with industry standards such as TLS 1.3, covering access control, cloud environments, and hardware security modules (HSM). The long-term goal is to complete the hardening of validator signatures. Given that Arc's block finalization time is less than 1 second, the current assessment considers the risk of quantum attacks in this phase to be relatively limited, and it will be steadily advanced after the post-quantum consensus toolchain matures.Circle also warns that attackers may adopt a "collect now, decrypt later" strategy, and institutions should plan their cryptographic migration paths as early as possible.

According to Decrypt, as large investors such as enterprises and exchanges choose to stake Ethereum for yield rather than sell during market rebounds, the number of Ethereum validators entering the queue has surged to approximately 3.4 million ETH, marking one of the longest staking queue records since the network transitioned to PoS, with an expected wait time of about 60 days.This figure has significantly increased from around 900,000 ETH in early January, indicating that major market participants are opting to lock up supply for yield.Industry feedback shows that current demand is primarily driven by large enterprises and exchanges seeking to generate returns on idle crypto assets. Analysts suggest that the narrative surrounding Ethereum's potential in payment infrastructure and AI-related applications may also be fueling this demand.

According to CoinDesk, DoubleZero, a crypto infrastructure startup co-founded by former Solana Foundation executive Austin Federa, will launch the second phase of its delegation program on March 9, reallocating 2.4 million SOL from its 13 million SOL pool to reward validators operating in underrepresented regions such as São Paulo, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Tokyo.Each region will receive up to 600,000 SOL in additional delegated staking incentives, aimed at reducing the increasingly concentrated geographical distribution of Solana validators in Europe and introducing the "multicast" data transmission capabilities widely used in traditional finance.Federa stated that one of the unintended consequences of blockchain acceleration is that validators are more likely to co-locate, similar to how early high-frequency trading on Wall Street competed to place servers close to the New York Stock Exchange.

ValidatorQueue data shows that the Ethereum staking amount has surpassed 30% of the circulating supply, reaching 30.27%, marking a new milestone.Meanwhile, investors are still queuing in the validator queue to deposit $8 billion worth of pending staking tokens, also setting a historical high.

According to The Block, the number of daily active validators on Solana has fallen below 800, reaching levels not seen since 2021.This data represents a decline of over 65% from the peak of approximately 2,500 validators at the beginning of 2023. The volume of validator voting transactions has decreased from about 300,000 per day to 170,000, a drop of 40%. The main reason for the loss of validators is the change in economic incentives, including the gradual reduction of voting cost support provided by the Solana Foundation Delegation Program and the staking matching policy over time.Despite the contraction in the number of validators, non-voting transaction volumes, such as user-initiated DApp interactions and token transfers, remain stable at around 100,000,000 transactions per day.