Lido moves $16.5 billion staked ETH to new validators

The Lido liquid staking protocol has initiated its largest technical upgrade since 2023, beginning the migration of more than 8 million staked Ethereum (ETH), valued at approximately $16.5 billion, onto a new validator architecture. The move, which started on July -, 2026, consolidates Lido's vast stake across fewer validators and introduces new financial accountability measures for its professional node operators.

The upgrade leverages changes enabled by Ethereum's Pectra hard fork, which was activated in May 2025. It allows validators to hold a maximum effective balance of 2,048 ETH, a significant increase from the previous 32 ETH cap. By migrating its stake onto these larger "0x02" validators, Lido is expected to reduce the total number of Ethereum validators by approximately one-third. This consolidation is projected to cut the volume of routine attestation messages on the network's consensus layer by about 29% per epoch, easing operational load.

A core component of the upgrade is the rollout of Curated Module v2 (CMv2) for Lido's 34 professional node operators. For the first time in the protocol's history, these operators are now required to post locked ETH as collateral....