Ethereum Proposes Adding More ETH for Validator Staking in Pectra Upgrade

Ethereum has recently officially added proposal EIP-7251 to the upcoming Pectra hard fork. This proposal aims to increase the cap limit for available staking (currently set at 32 ETH per validator), thereby unlocking greater potential for the validation network.

Ethereum Proposes Adding More ETH for Validator Staking in Pectra Upgrade

Following the successful deployment of Dencun upgrade, the Ethereum Core Devs team has initiated discussions for upcoming changes. Specifically, with proposal EIP-7600, a curated list of enhancements slated for the Pectra upgrade has been published for community review and discussion.

On the early morning of March 22, this list officially included proposal EIP-7251 in the Pectra upgrade.

This proposal will alter the "Max Effective Balance" factor, raising the current staking balance threshold above 32 ETH. Previously, if users staked more than 32 ETH (e.g., 34 ETH), the excess ETH (2 ETH in this example) would become unusable for validation and thereby ineligible for staking rewards.

EIP-7251 (also known as "MaxEB") aims to address centralization concerns among large staking entities. Individual players can contribute their smaller ETH holdings to participate in staking, rather than waiting to accumulate a substantial 32 ETH to set up a validator node on the network.

At the time of writing, the Pectra upgrade is still in the discussion phase, and the final list of proposals to be implemented has not been finalized. Therefore, the inclusion of additional or amended proposals in this upgrade will depend heavily on upcoming weekly meetings of the Ethereum Core Devs team.