Staking at Home - The Daily Gwei #515
Ethereum Proof of Stake was built for home users.
With over 13 million ETH at stake and over 400,000 active validators, Ethereum’s Proof of Stake Beacon Chain is kind of a big deal. Even though the Beacon Chain is already as big as it is, it still has a long way to go - especially when it comes to making it easy for anyone on the planet (or off the planet) to stake any amount of ETH that they have.
Superphiz’s tweet above is something that I really resonate with - staking isn’t very difficult today and many people would be able to get a solo staking operation going by following one of the many guides out there. On top of that, the Beacon Chain has been designed in such a way that it is very friendly to these solo stakers which means it’s very difficult to lose a large chunk or all of your ETH. For example, going offline only results in a slow ‘inactivity leak’ of the staked ETH and is easy to recoup any losses because if the validator is offline for 24 hours and then online for the next 24 hours, the rewards just net out to 0.
The other points Superphiz brings up are also crucial - staking does not require powerful hardware (you can stake on a Raspberry Pi), there is actually very little maintenance required (most of it is basically just keeping the nodes/validators up to date) and you certainly don’t need to be a “professional” to stake. In saying this, I do get the worry from people whenever they have to update their nodes or change anything related to their validators - obviously people don’t want to risk losing any precious ETH so we do need to make this process feel a lot less stressful than it is today.
In terms of lowering the barrier to entry even further there are multiple efforts happening on this front. For solo stakers there are many guides already in existence, the validator software itself is becoming easier/simpler to use over time, and lots of work is being done to provide visual dashboards for staking. Decentralized staking pools like Rocket Pool also make it very easy for anyone to stake their ETH and there are also plenty of centralized staking services - though of course these will get even easier to use over time.
Ethereum Proof of Stake was built for home/solo stakers first and it very much shows this fact in the overall architectural design of the protocol. Though of course it’s not just the design/architecture that needs to be thought through - it’s also the accessibility and general UI/UX so that the barrier to entry can be lowered as much as humanly possible. As with all things in Ethereum, we’re working on it - it’s just going to take some time!
Have a great day everyone,
Anthony Sassano
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All information presented above is for educational purposes only and should not be taken as investment advice.