Lido has started moving more than 8 million staked ETH, worth about $16 billion, onto Ethereum’s larger 0x02 validators. The upgrade, Curated Module v2, requires the protocol’s professional node operators to post their own ETH as collateral for the first time and is expected to cut Ethereum’s total validator count by roughly one third.
Lido began consolidating more than 8 million ETH, worth about $16 billion, onto Ethereum’s larger post-Pectra 0x02 validators on Monday as part of a major protocol upgrade. That is around a fifth of all staked ETH, shifting onto validators that can hold up to 2,048 ETH instead of the previous 32 ETH maximum.
Lido’s chief of staking, Isidoros Passadis, said “this is the biggest change to how Lido Core staking works since Lido V2”.
Fewer validators, lighter consensus layer
The move raises the share of staked ETH sitting on 0x02 validators to roughly 52%, from about 32% today, and cuts Ethereum’s total validator count by roughly one third. Lido said the reduction eases load on the network.
According to The Defiant, the cut takes the network from about 880,000 validators to roughly 628,000, with attestation messages across the network trimmed by approximately 29% per epoch. The larger validator type arrived with Pectra, the Ethereum hardfork activated in May 2025.
Operators put their own capital behind the stake
Curated Module v2 requires curated professional operators to post their own ETH as collateral, which can be seized to cover losses from slashing, improper execution-layer rewards, and other operational failures. The Curated Module is the permissioned node operator layer of the protocol, and it handles well over 90% of Lido’s staked ETH.
All 34 node operators in the curated set are expected to make the transition. Lido is a liquid staking protocol, providing technology that makes it easier to stake ETH. Launched in 2020, it also rolled out Community Staking Module v3 alongside the upgrade for community and solo stakers.
A migration measured in months
The consolidation will not finish quickly. Crypto Briefing reports the migration is constrained by Ethereum’s consolidation queue and could take at least 117 days under ideal conditions, with the module initially seeding approximately 3,882 new validator keys holding 124,224 ETH.
When the plan debuted in January, Lido devs noted the migration could take up to six months to complete, during which Lido would miss about 738.5 ETH in protocol rewards as its staked ETH is unstaked and reallocated. LDO traded at $0.38, down 0.9% in the past 24 hours, according to CoinGecko.
Lido’s total revenue fell by 23% to $40.5 million in 2025 amid shifts to Ethereum’s staking ecosystem, including lower staking yields from network-wide APR compression.
Sources: The Block, The Defiant, Crypto Briefing
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