The Ethereum ecosystem has seen just 226 validators removed since the launch of the Beacon Chain on December 1, 2020, representing just 0.04% of 524,060 validators, according to a core Ethereum developer.
Reduction is a process in which a validator violates proof-of-stake consensus rules, often resulting in the removal of that validator from the network and reduction of a portion of the Ether (ETH) staked that the validator provided as guarantee.
Those slim chances of being cut were highlighted by Ethereum core developer “Superphiz” in a February 23 Twitter post, suggesting that people shouldn’t worry about staking ETH for that particular reason.
Removed 226 of the 523,000 beacon chain validators. This is nothing to lose sleep over. There have been many outages during the failed system migration. Here are four emerging best practice tips to avoid this:https://t.co/wleR4YQmDD
—superphiz.eth (@superphiz) February 22, 2023
The developer also explained “four emerging best practices” to further reduce those odds.
One of these practices was to wipe any existing chain data on old betting machines and reinstall and reformat the validator when necessary, Superphiz said, noting that many reductions occur due to “failed system migrations.”
Superphiz then suggested using “doppelganger detection”, which checks if the validator keys are active before starting the validation process.
While this may affect the uptime of the validator, he explained that it’s not worth reducing the “perfect uptime” in the grand scheme of things:
“It is wise to throw away $0.06 to save $1,700. (A cut costs about 1 ether)”.
The developer said it’s also worth looking at the buffers and logs on the Beacon Chain to be aware of any potential issues that might arise.
If something feels wrong, Superphiz suggested “take everything offline” and “come back” when the problem has been identified and a proposed solution has been established.
The developer also noted that more than 150 of the 226 outages were caused by services rather than “home stakeholders.”
The drawdown may occur due to a “certification” or “proposal” violation, according to the Ethereum Foundation.
An attestation violation is one in which a malicious validator attempts to change a block’s history or “double votes” by certifying two candidates for the same block.
A proposal violation occurs when a validator proposes and signs two different blocks for the same space.
Most court events stem from attestation violations, according to data from beaconcha.in.
One of the largest outage events occurred on February 4, 2021, when staking infrastructure provider “Staked” had 75 of its validators hacked for producing competing blocks. Staked said the certification violation occurred due to a “technical issue.”
Related: What are the risks of the Ethereum merger?
Since the Beacon Chain merged with Ethereum’s proof-of-work chain on Sept. 15, only 35 of the 226 total cuts have occurred, according to beaconcha.in, suggesting that the merger hasn’t had a profound impact on shares. trim rates. .
With around 16.7 million ETH staked (according to beaconcha.in) out of the 120.4 million ETH currently in circulation (according to CoinGecko), the percentage of ETH staked is around 13.9%.
ETH can be staked through a centralized exchange, by delegation to a third-party validation network, or by running on a standalone node, which requires 32 ETH.
