Stakers were surveyed once again in Spring 2025 for information that gives insight into their profiles, sentiments, motivations, and opinions. The survey mirrored the structure and question set from the 2024 Staking Survey while expanding to allow responses for anyone staking for Ethereum using any method to participate as well as anyone not staking at all.
Overall stakers remain committed but have concerns about a more complex environment with large players, centralization, and uncertainty about rewards.
In this post we share notable insights on new current event questions relating to Pectra feature adoption, issuance, hardware, and internet bandwidth. Additionally, we highlight trend shifts gathered from questions where new year-over-year data was available.
Feedback on the survey for next year is welcome which we expect would launch in the first half of 2026.
Survey responses were collected using LimeSurvey software. Questions included branching display logic to ensure continued relevance to the respondent. Cookies were used to deter repeated participation and a CAPTCHA to deter bot activity. The survey was open to the public and responses were anonymous.
Responses were solicited on EthStaker’s social channels (Reddit, Discord, Twitter), in public channels of staking-as-a-service providers (SaaS), hardware providers, and client software. The survey was also posted on the Beaconcha.in website and reposted by the ethereum Twitter account. Submissions were collected between 20 March 2025 and 22 May 2025.
Only data from completed surveys was used. Incomplete surveys were discarded. Results were manually inspected for bot activity and no complete surveys were discarded. Bar charts are predominantly used while data displayed as pie charts were only the result of single-choice answers. Multiple choice answers are described as ranked options or checkboxes and denoted with a star character (✶).
As with last year’s survey, the data leans toward independent operators vs other more passive methods of staking. This could be due to the active engagement necessary to be an independent operator as well as the inherent reach of the EthStaker community. Those who are connected to managing their validators may have been more likely to see the survey as they are already paying attention to current events in the ecosystem.
This information should be taken as qualitative and directional rather than quantitative as it relies on subjective self-reported data from the responding subset of stakers.
Contrary to last year’s survey, this survey was intended to include anyone: operators with their own capital, managing someone else’s capital, people who used to stake but have since exited, and those who have never staked.
Raw data can be found here.
23% reported are genesis stakers vs 32% last year. After that, most reported starting in Q1-2 2023 (13%).
60% of those managing their own capital run between 1-5 validators, and 20% run 6-15.
47% hold some liquid staking tokens, same as last year.
Special software used to stake: 39% did not use specialized staking software while 18% used Rocket Pool, 13% DAppNode, and 10% ethdocker.
Of those using staking service providers, Allnodes led (32%) followed by Ethpool (12%) and Kiln (10%).
Top ranked reasons for running a validator vs using an LST protocol were to benefit the network (27%), minimize trust assumptions (22%), and maximize profitability (17%).
23% run a fallback node, similar to last year's levels.
Reported smoothing pool participation fell with 26% of 2025 respondents in one vs 30% in 2024. More respondents were unfamiliar with the concept in 2025 (13%) vs 2024 (9%).
Top practical concerns included risk to Ethereum protocol or price / want capital out of ETH, supermajority client risks, hardware (upgrade or repair costs), and privacy / exposed IP.
Stake centralization concern fell moderately, with 6 percentage points fewer expressing the highest levels of concern in 2025 vs 2024.
Client supermajority concern fell significantly, with 25 percentage points fewer expressing the highest levels of concern in 2025 vs 2024.
38% more favorably view the value of solo staking for the protocol vs 48% in 2024. The percent of respondents who view it as less favorable rose by 5 percentage points.
20% more favorably view the value of solo staking for an individual vs 28% in 2024. The percent of respondents who view it as less favorable rose by 5 percentage points.
Sentiments around the degree of adequate representation in protocol research remained steady from last year, with about a third of stakers feeling somewhat represented.
Sentiment for advocacy of home and solo stakers shifted away from feeling well represented toward "not knowing or paying attention" by 5 percentage points.
49% of those managing their own capital plan to migrate to Type 2 validators at some point. 16% plan to stay with Type 1.
33% of professional operators plan to migrate to Type 2. 28% plan to stay with Type 1.
22% of stakers using a staking-as-a-service (SaaS) provider have plans to migrate to Type 2 validators at some point while 5% plan to opt out.
53% of SaaS stakers had never heard of Type 2 validators.
Maintenance time: 69% spent 2 hours or less in 2025 vs 65% in 2024.
Memory (GB of RAM): 50% have 32GB, 30% have 64GB, 13% have 16GB, and 2% have 128GB. Because stakers reported exact RAM amounts, the chart below groups these into ranges for easier visualization.
Storage (TB of SSD): 53% have 4TB, 34% have 2TB, 3% have 8TB, and 2% have 1TB. Because stakers reported exact SSD sizes, the chart below groups these into ranges for easier visualization.
Bandwidth (Mbps)
Advertised Upload: 36% have 700-1499 Mbps, and evenly distributed across lower ranges.
Advertised Download: 47% at 700-1499 Mbps, 18% 100-299 Mbps, and 20% at 300-699 Mbps.
20% have access to 1500+ Mbps Upload while 5% buy that service level.
22% have access to 1500+ Mbps Download while 8% buy that service level.
Router and Modem: 53% used their own modem and router, 41% use ISP provided equipment, and 6% do not manage their home network.
40% do not plan to add new stake in 2025 vs 32% in 2024.
28% plan to keep adding stake in 2025 vs 31% in 2024.
68% of stakers reported the yield under which they'd exit to be in the range of 1.5-2.5% or less, as compared to 58% last year.
57% of stakers reported the yield under which they'd stop adding new stake to be in the range of 1.5-2.5% or less, as compared to 44% last year.
Of the 40 stakers that reported exiting, top reasons were to get higher yield somewhere else (38%) followed by de-risking (20%).
The top ranked resources for learning about staking were EthStaker materials / community, Somer Esat / Coincashew, and ethereum.org
The top ranked places for keeping up with Ethereum protocol and ecosystem news were Twitter, Reddit, and various Discords, followed by the Daily Gwei and Bankless.
The top ranked places for keeping up with validator related updates were Discord (27%), explorer/notification services (23%), and GitHub releases (17%).
At the end of the survey, stakers were given the opportunity to comment on anything that they felt hadn’t been adequately covered in the survey. Full answers are available in the raw data and an AI-assisted summary of answers is provided below.
N=366
Yield Structure, MEV, and Economics (n=39): Stakers raised concern about MEV fairness, yield not matching staking risk, and called for features like in-protocol proposal reward smoothing.
Staking Access and Protocol-Level Incentives (n=28): Commenters were interested in improved accessibility to staking, such as enabling sub-32 ETH options, and updating protocol based incentives to be higher for solo stakers. Ideas included rewarding loyalty over time and having a roadmap tied to staker incentives.
Centralization and Governance Risks (n=26): Centralization vectors and governance risks were highlighted including LST and ETF dominance, validator voting imbalances, slashing risks, and social layer gaps.
Technical Client and Protocol Fragility (n=18): Fears relating to client bugs, correlated failures, time sync risk, software supply chain attacks, and builder stack centralization were mentioned as areas needing attention to make staking safer and more secure.
Future Planning and Roadmap Visibility (n=13): The need for better communicated hardware requirements, cost transparency, staking operator expectations, and validator modeling were noted. Comments mentioned that while there are examples of these kinds of planning topics published over time, there is need for a comprehensive treatment.
Protocol Scalability Tradeoffs (n=11): Calls were made for more thorough research and less rushed designs about how scaling efforts impact staker metrics like validator revenue, blobs impact on fees, and node operations. There are concerns about negative externalities to scaling at all costs, prioritizing blobs to the detriment of independent stakers, and faster protocol changes making it more difficult to fully understand the tradeoffs.
Financial Sustainability and Yield Adequacy (n=50): Stakers shared complaints about low income, especially compared to straightforward TradFi investments. Additional frustrations mentioned taxes, MEV favoring larger players, and the price of ETH.
Accessibility and User Experience (n=47): User experience improvement requests included interests in plug-and-play staking setups, better support for non-technical users, more clearly written and up-to-date guides, and refined, simplified UX overall and for key management specifically.
Social, Community, and Educational Gaps (n=42): Respondents noted a scattered set of educational information about staking and a decline in community-based support. Stakers want reliable support options and curated lists of legitimate, community-endorsed tools.
Solo Staker Support and Incentives (n=37): Comments about solo stakers lacking recognition and occupying a disadvantaged position compared to staking pools highlighted concerns about the extent to which solo stakers were valued, still had a purpose, or were receiving due recognition.
Privacy, Security, and Safety (n=26): A variety of security and safety comments discussed physical security worries and inheritance management types of issues. Also noted were digital security concerns both short term (key protection, exposure risks, and time sync centralization) and long term (post-quantum risks and protecting against an unknown future attack).
Infrastructure Burden and Rising Requirements (n=23): Practical management difficulties were shared in comments about hardware requirements, troubleshooting sync instability creating lost revenue, strained internet bandwidth due to the Dencun network update, and costly upgrades to maintain ongoing node management.
96% identified as male.
Regional staking distribution held steady in 2025, with North America and Western Europe/UK still making up a combined 66%.
57% identified as strongly technical, 10% as not technical.
67% of 2025 respondents work outside crypto or are unemployed, up from 60% in 2024
The top reasons for running a validator vs using an LST protocol remained 'benefitting the network' followed by 'removing trust assumptions'. Profitability came in third behind those two, suggesting that independent operators continue to prioritize the motivations for protecting the network while also looking out for the financial sustainability of their efforts.
Pectra features related to staking included the ability to consolidate stake from many to one validator with the intent to bring down load on the network and enable compounding staking rewards. Stakers managing their own capital were more likely to plan to use Type 2 validators (49%) than professional operators (33%) or those using a staking-as-a-service (SaaS) provider (18%). This could be due to protocol or service designs requiring more work to adapt to the new validator type and subsequently those services not supporting as quickly. It also suggests that with greater individual control, operators can more readily take advantage of new features available in the protocol.
The top practical concerns involved hardware requirements, internet cost and availability, the economics of staking due to ETH price, and newly emerging centralization concerns due to protocol developments and the expected entrance of large ETF issuers staking. While concerns around supermajority client risks or client diversity softened, they were still high. This could be due to the notable impact of various mitigation initiatives on these topics over recent years.
Stakers make a range of decisions about hardware and internet bandwidth which directly impact their cost and capacity to operate. New data in this survey shows that while more than half (63%) are over provisioned on hard drive space, only a third (34%) have more memory (RAM) than required. Fixed costs (like hardware) make maintenance challenging and offer reasons for client teams to continue prioritizing client software efficiencies such as pruning and simplifying resource usage.
Internet bandwidth matters most on the upstream side because validators must quickly broadcast attestations and blocks. This survey reports that 18% of current validators fall below the 50 Mbps upload level and 29% are below 100 Mbps. These figures help frame the debate around EIP 7870, which proposes floors of 50 Mbps for validators and 100 Mbps for local block builders. If these guidelines were applied today, about one in five current home operators would be under the validator threshold, and nearly one in three would be excluded from local block building.
This survey is not just a snapshot of who is staking today. It shows where the pressure points are and offers a guide to where Ethereum research and advocacy must focus next.
As yields flatten and MEV issues rise, many stakers are nearing tipping points to participate less or even exit. To keep independent validators valued and active in the network, protocol-level updates like MEV burn, in-protocol PBS, and reward smoothing will help decide whether independent operators can sustain into the future or fade.
Dominant block builders, restaking entities, and ETF custodians (once approved) may come to rival client supermajorities as the biggest centralization risks. Research and support efforts need real‑time and flexible monitoring and guardrails to help stakers navigate and survive this changing landscape.
Hardware strain and bandwidth caps are already creating pressures on stakers today. PeerDAS and related work will help stakers address those pressures as EIP‑7870 style guidelines are brought into use to avoid excluding large sections of the independent validator set.
Onboarding and maintaining a validator node remains a challenge for many and becomes more complex with successive upgrades introducing new capabilities that raise the minimum sophistication for operating a staking node. Supporting resources for stakers in an Ethereum accelerating in development will be vital toward sustaining the independent staker.
Future surveys will keep tracking these metrics and subject areas so that advocates, client teams, and researchers can see which efforts are working and where new threats emerge.
Contact: team@ethstaker.org
Illustrations: electropillow
Jonathan
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