Shapella’s Show

Shapella’s Show: ETH Staking’s Coming Shake-Up

By: Akshat Vaidya, Head of Investments @ Maelstrom

  • Maelstrom’s debut investment was in an early mover in that second category, a project that isn’t competing with either the Lidos or the Coinbases of the world, but rather tooling them to eliminate single points of failure. Obol Labs, an investment we closed in January this year, is helping solo-stakers as well as fully centralized, proto-decentralized and genuinely non-custodial [see next bullet] services alike further decentralize. Obol’s distributed validator technology (“DVT”) middleware allows validator keys to be “split” among multiple node operators, effectively creating a “multi-sig” validator that can be run simultaneously across a collection of machines. These multi-validators still “speak” as one to the Beacon chain, avoiding penalties or slashing, while improving redundancy, security, and decentralization across the ETH staking space. More here.
  • ether.fi, on the other hand, is our first investment in a project aiming to bring about a stepwise evolution from the legacy custodial models of both Lido and Coinbase. ether.fi is building one of the first genuinely non-custodial, delegated staking services for Ethereum (and other PoS networks in the future). In a post-Shapella world, where stakers are able to freely bounce from staking service to staking service to chase the highest yield, ether.fi circumvents the impending race to the bottom by competing on something other than just APY. With ether.fi, stakers generate and control their own keys throughout the staking process from creation to redemption, and can exit validators to claim their ETH back at any time, preventing node operator malfeasance. I.e., “your keys, your crypto.” ether.fi’s non-custodial model reduces risks for all parties, including node operators who will no longer be required to keep wallets connected or rely on a trusted middle party for coordination. More on the mechanics here.