Vitalik Buterin Proposes Solutions To Address Ethereum Staking Centralization

According to Cointelegraph, Ethereum co-creator Vitalik Buterin has proposed several measures to mitigate block production and staking centralization during the 'Scourge' phase of Ethereum's technical roadmap. In a post dated October 20, Buterin expressed concerns that economies-of-scale within staking have led smaller staking pools to merge with larger ones, resulting in two entities producing 88% of Ethereum blocks in the first two weeks of October. Buterin emphasized that staking centralization is a significant risk to Ethereum, potentially leading to increased transaction censorship and other crises. He noted that while 30% of Ether (ETH) currently staked is sufficient to protect against 51% attacks, further centralization could introduce additional risks. He warned that staking could become less profitable and impose more obligations on Ether holders, weakening the slashing mechanism and allowing a liquid staking token to dominate network effects. To address these issues, Buterin suggested capping the amount of Ether a user can stake and limiting staking penalties to 12.5% of staked Ether. He proposed a two-tier staking model with 'risk-bearing' (slashable) and 'risk-free' (unslashable) options. His concerns were echoed by Ethereum Foundation researcher Toni Wahrstätter, who highlighted that two block builders, Beaverbuild and Titan Builder, constructed 88.7% of Ethereum blocks in early October. Buterin pointed out that Ethereum's proposer-builder separation method for block construction has led to centralization problems. While Ethereum's security is not currently at risk, he warned that the issue could worsen transaction censorship and increase block inclusion times from 6 seconds to up to 114 seconds. This delay could allow block builders to extract user revenue through sandwich attacks or lead to significant market manipulation in decentralized finance liquidations. To combat these issues, Buterin proposed a 'fork-choice-enforced inclusion lists' model, where the task of choosing transactions would return to the proposer or staker, with the builder only determining the order of transactions. Another alternative is the 'BRAID' proposal, which splits the block production process among several actors, each requiring only a medium level of sophistication to maximize their revenue.