Lido has opened a second route to Ethereum validators that hold up to 2,048 ETH, and this one is open to anyone. The 0x02 Community Staking Module (CSM) went live on Ethereum mainnet on Friday 23 October, according to a Lido blog post published that day. Operators must put up a 32 ETH bond for their first validator, more than 13 times the 2.4 ETH that Lido’s original permissionless module asks, and the new module may hold only 0.01% of Lido Core’s stake at the start.
For people who hold stETH, the token behind Lido‘s proof of stake coin with a protocol that stakes it for you and issues a transferable token (such as Lido stETH or rETH) representing the deposit plus rewards, which you can use or sell while the coins stay staked.">liquid staking, nothing changes today. The module is a new door for node operators, not a new product for holders. And the door is narrow: by Coindaro’s calculation from DefiLlama data, the 0.01% limit leaves room for roughly 1,000 ETH, about 32 validators at their 32 ETH starting deposit. That makes the launch a pilot.
What went live on 23 October
The 0x02 CSM is a separate module that runs in parallel with the existing one, which Lido now calls the 0x01 CSM. Anyone can sign up through the csm.lido.fi interface, post a bond in ETH and register validator keys. Lido then allocates ETH from its stakers to those validators.
The difference is in the withdrawal credentials. Validators in the new module use the 0x02 type introduced by EIP-7251 in Ethereum’s Pectra upgrade. These are compounding validators: their effective balance can grow up to 2,048 ETH instead of stopping at 32 ETH, so rewards stay on the balance up to that ceiling rather than being swept out. The older module keeps the classic 32 ETH validators, according to the Lido documentation, which now says the 0x02 CSM “is live on Mainnet”.
The governance step closed the same day. In the Lido research forum thread on the module, contributor nikita.p wrote on 23 October: “Dual Governance Proposal #15 has been enacted and the 0x02 CSM has been activated.” A pull request titled “0x02 CSM mainnet” in Lido’s documentation repository was merged that day too. Coindaro could not load the proposal page itself, so its full contents and vote dates are not checked here.
From testnet to mainnet in seven weeks
The module took about three months from DAO approval to launch. The launch proposal was approved on 20 July, according to a CryptoSlate summary published on 4 October. A testnet version went up in early September. Crypto Briefing reported on 8 September that it was built on version 3 of the existing CSM architecture and that “Mainnet deployment is targeted for October 2026, following approval by the Lido DAO”. Lido kept to that month.
Some numbers moved along the way. At the proposal stage, CryptoSlate reported a module cap of 2% of Lido’s stake and a top-up queue of 16 seats. The live module starts with 0.01% and 32 seats. Lido cut the launch limit, and doubled the queue, between the October plan and the mainnet release.
Lido staking for operators now starts at 32 ETH
The headline number is the bond. An operator posts 32 ETH for the first key and 30 ETH for each further key. In the 0x01 module the default is 2.4 ETH for the first key and 1.3 ETH for each further one, according to Lido’s documentation. On Coindaro’s arithmetic from those figures, the first-key bond is 13.3 times higher and each extra key costs about 23 times more.
In dollars, at an ETH price of $2,313 at 06:48 UTC on 26 October, a 32 ETH bond comes to about $74,000 and a 30 ETH bond to about $69,400 (Coindaro’s calculation from our market data at that time). That puts the route out of reach for most individuals who stake from home, even though the module carries the word “community”.
A bond is not the stake. A validator in this module can reach 2,048 ETH, and the operator funds only the bond; the rest comes from Lido’s blockchain that runs exactly as written when it is called, holding and moving funds according to its code, without an intermediary able to change the outcome.">smart contract holding reserves of two or more tokens, supplied by users, that a decentralized exchange uses to execute trades automatically at a price set by a formula.">pool, which means from people who deposited ETH for stETH. At a full balance, 32 ETH is 1.5625% of the 2,048 ETH the validator runs, a ratio CryptoSlate also pointed out on 4 October. Lido supplies up to about 2,016 ETH on top, if the validator gets that far; the documentation says top-ups aim slightly below the 2,048 ETH maximum to avoid overfilling.
The reward split is also different. Under the default profile, the operator receives 2% of the rewards (3.5% in the 0x01 module) and the DAO treasury 8% (6.5% in the 0x01 module). Both splits add up to 10% of rewards, so the total cut taken before rewards reach stakers is the same in both modules; what moves is 1.5 percentage points from the operator to the DAO, which the documentation calls the DAO fee.
Lido argues the trade is worth it for an operator with enough ETH. Its blog estimates a capital efficiency of 2.18 times that of solo staking for a first validator at the full 2,048 ETH effective balance, rising toward about 2.26 times as an operator adds validators. The estimate counts the rewards earned on the bond itself. It is Lido’s own figure, and it assumes the validator is fully topped up, which the documentation does not promise.
| Item | 0x01 CSM (default profile) | 0x02 CSM (live 23 Oct 2026) |
|---|---|---|
| Withdrawal credentials | 0x01 | 0x02 (compounding, EIP-7251) |
| Maximum effective balance per validator | 32 ETH | 2,048 ETH |
| Bond, first key | 2.4 ETH | 32 ETH |
| Bond, each further key | 1.3 ETH | 30 ETH |
| Operator share of rewards | 3.5% | 2% |
| DAO treasury share of rewards | 6.5% | 8% |
| Preferential profiles (ICS, IDVTC) | Yes | No, one permissionless profile |
| Stake share limit at launch | Not covered here | 0.01% of Lido Core TVL |
Two more limits matter for anyone already in Lido’s community module. The preferential 0x01 profiles, known as ICS and IDVTC, which offer lower bonds or better terms to vetted operators, do not carry over. And there is no native migration path based on consolidation, according to Lido’s blog. An operator who wants 0x02 validators either runs both modules or exits 0x01 validators and uses the released bond to fund new 0x02 keys. Operators who are happy where they are can simply stay on 0x01.
How stake reaches a 2,048 ETH validator
A new 0x02 validator does not receive 2,048 ETH in one go. Lido’s blog describes two phases. First the key waits in Lido’s initial deposit queue for a seed deposit of 32 ETH, which also has to clear Ethereum’s own entry queue before the validator is active. Only then does it move to a second queue for top-ups, which arrive in turn until it reaches its target balance.
The top-up queue has 32 seats. Seed deposits take priority over top-ups, and a validator that reaches its target frees its seat for the next one. Lido’s operator documentation is blunt about the catch: top-ups depend on the module’s stake share limit and on overall deposit demand, “so a validator may never reach that target”. Both phases can take longer than a standard 32 ETH deposit, it adds.
That last point is the real risk for an operator’s maths. The 32 ETH bond is sized for a 2,048 ETH validator. If the validator stays at, say, a few hundred ETH because deposits into Lido are slow or the module is full, the operator has posted the large bond and earns its 2% on a much smaller balance. Lido publishes no schedule that would tell an operator how long a full top-up takes.
Why the first wave is about 1,000 ETH
Lido is opening the module slowly on purpose. Its blog post says the module launched with “a stake share limit of 0.01% of Lido Core TVL and a 32-seat top-up queue”, which it expects to fit roughly 32 seed deposits in the first batch.
Coindaro checked that against public data. DefiLlama counted 9,684,288 ETH-equivalent on Lido’s Ethereum side in a data point dated 05:11 UTC on 26 October. One hundredth of a percent of that is about 970 ETH, by Coindaro’s calculation. Thirty-two seed deposits of 32 ETH come to 1,024 ETH, so the two figures agree within rounding, and DefiLlama’s token count is close to what its dollar TVL implies at the current ETH price.
Set against the whole network, the pilot is tiny. Validatorqueue.com showed 44.1 million ETH staked at about 07:00 UTC on 26 October, 36.11% of supply, spread over 817,293 active validators. About 1,000 ETH is roughly 0.002% of that total, again by Coindaro’s calculation.
The plan is to raise the limit in steps. Once the first seed deposits are active, the CSM Committee intends to propose increases through Easy Track motions, Lido’s fast-track mechanism for routine changes, and to repeat them until the module reaches its maximum. No date or size has been published for the first increase.
The maximum is far larger. Lido’s blog says the 0x01 and 0x02 modules, which run in parallel, share a maximum combined capacity of 20% of Lido Core TVL, approved by the Lido DAO, and it calls that a ceiling for future expansion, not the current limit. On today’s DefiLlama count, 20% would be about 1.9 million ETH, enough for roughly 950 validators at a full 2,048 ETH if all of it went to the new module (Coindaro’s calculation, an illustration only, since the 20% is shared with the 0x01 module).
Three weeks in Ethereum’s entry queue
Even a validator that Lido’s limit allows still has to wait for Ethereum. At about 07:00 UTC on 26 October, validatorqueue.com showed 1,268,911 ETH waiting to enter, with an estimated wait of 22 days and 12 hours, against 3,548 ETH and about one day in the exit queue. CryptoSlate’s reading on 25 October was 1,295,748 ETH and 22 days and 23 hours.
Those are network-wide figures, not CSM data. But a seed deposit joins the same line, so by our reading a first 0x02 validator that deposits now would wait about three weeks before activating, and the CSM Committee’s first limit increase would follow that. We looked at who is filling that queue in our report on the 1.2 million ETH waiting to stake.
What changes for stETH holders: nothing to do
For anyone holding stETH or wstETH, no action is needed. None of the Lido documents Coindaro read announce a change to stETH, wstETH, withdrawals or the fees holders pay. Lido also gave no estimate of any effect on the stETH reward rate, and we make none.
The weight of the protocol explains why each module change gets attention. DefiLlama put Lido’s total value locked at $22.49 billion at 05:11 UTC on 26 October, almost all of it on Ethereum, which ranks it third on DefiLlama’s protocol list behind the exchanges Binance and OKX, which DefiLlama also lists. A month earlier the figure was $26.47 billion; most of the 15% drop comes from the lower ETH price, not from ETH leaving. Using DefiLlama’s 9.68 million ETH and validatorqueue.com’s 44.1 million ETH staked, both read on 26 October, Lido holds roughly a fifth of all staked ETH, about 22% by Coindaro’s calculation. Lido’s own dashboard may give a slightly different count.
The risk side changes in shape rather than for holders directly. In Lido’s design, the operator’s bond is the first cover for losses the operator causes, such as poor performance or slashing. A 2,048 ETH validator puts far more stake behind a single key than a 32 ETH one, so any penalty on that key applies to a larger balance. Lido has not published, in the pages we read, how exits work in detail for these validators.
There is also a structural argument, and here it is our reading rather than Lido’s claim. After the July upgrade described below, Lido said its Curated Module of professional operators secured around 90% of the staked ETH in Lido Core. A public route to the same large validators gives non-professional operators a way in, though the 32 ETH bond and the 0.01% start mean it will be a small one for now. Readers new to the mechanics can start with our liquid staking explainer.
How this differs from Lido’s July move to 0x02
This is the second Lido step toward 0x02 validators this year, and the two are easy to confuse. On 27 July, Lido announced Curated Module v2, which migrates more than 265,000 of its professional operators’ validators from 0x01 to 0x02 by consolidation. Lido said the move would lift the share of ETH on compounding validators from 32.06% to 52.21% and cut Ethereum’s validator count from about 880,000 to about 628,000. Forklog put the migration at about six months. Stakers had nothing to do then either. In the same post, Lido said its community module secured more than 770,000 ETH across about 335 operators.
That upgrade moves existing stake. The 0x02 CSM opens new, permissionless slots, with a bond, a limit and a queue. Lido has a separate open question about how deposits will be routed under Ethereum’s next upgrade, which we covered in our piece on Glamsterdam and builder accounts; the new module does not change it. Operators comparing permissionless options can also look at Rocket Pool, which runs a different bond model.
What is still unknown
The pace is the main unknown. Lido has said it will raise the 0.01% limit through Easy Track once seed deposits activate, but not by how much or when. With a 22-day entry queue, the first increase looks unlikely before mid-November on our reading of the data, and Lido has given no date.
Several other points are open. Lido has not published how many keys operators submitted in the first days. No operator or outside critic has commented publicly in what we found, and we report no reactions. Whether any given validator reaches 2,048 ETH depends on deposit demand, so the 2.18 times figure is a ceiling case rather than an expected return.
One technical change could also matter later. Lido’s blog mentions EIP-8148, a draft proposal that would let validators choose their own sweep threshold, such as 512 or 1,024 ETH, instead of keeping everything up to 2,048 ETH. Lido notes there is no guarantee it will be included in an upgrade. The next concrete marker is the first Easy Track motion to raise the module’s limit.