Lido Cuts Ethereum Validators by 29% in 2026 Core Upgrade
The shift lets Lido shrink its active validator set while keeping every staked ETH earning, a structural win for both protocol economics and Ethereum's consensus layer.
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The shift lets Lido shrink its active validator set while keeping every staked ETH earning, a structural win for both protocol economics and Ethereum's consensus layer.
The upgrade pushes Lido's staked ETH onto post-Pectra 0x02 validators, lifting their share of Ethereum's staking set to roughly 52% and trimming total validator count by about a third.
All 34 curated node operators are posting locked ETH bonds for the first time, adding financial accountability to a system that previously ran on reputation alone.
The institutional qualified custodian route into wrapped staked ETH is now open, with Anchorage wiring Lido's wstETH directly into a custody-native workflow for the first time at this scale.
The original on-chain read linked the deposits to Cobie directly, but a follow-up correction says the wallet in question is not his — the whale-overhang concern for LDO holders stands either way.