It's been a celebratory week for crypto with Bitcoin hitting all time highs after the US election results have rolled out. President elect Trump and the US republican party have been more embracing of crypto, so there is good reason for this optimism. Here are some of my baseline expectations for the staking and validator landscape (please do note that I'm no legal expert).

Welcome to another week of Validator digest! I've been compiling a list of new L1s that have yet to launch (it's an old habit back from my stakefish days). I wanted to share one interesting number: 42%. That's the percentage of new L1s that are launching using CometBFT and/or Cosmos SDK. This is validation of Cosmos' efforts in building out a protocol stack that can be deployed with extreme ease.

Welcome to another week of the Validator digest! Blockworks has released an insightful report (funded by Obol and Liquid Collective) surveying institutions on their thoughts on Ethereum staking. I wanted to highlight a few things that caught my eye.66% of respondents said they were familiar with Distributed Validator (DV) technology.

Welcome to another week of Validator digest! The biggest announcement this past week came from the Uniswap team who unveiled a new L2 dedicated to DeFi, Unichain. Most interestingly, they have announced from the get-go that they will have validators play a role in providing fast finality. Will this finally be the signal of many more L2s to decentralize their stack?

Jon (@jon_charb on X) of DBA has put out a great piece on L1 and L2 value capture. The post unpacks the economics of token holders (stakers), validators, and protocol issuance in great depth. It's quite a long read, so prepare a big cup of coffee this weekend before diving in.

Welcome to the third week of Validator digest! For this week, I'm sharing a list of all the interesting writings on assessing risks for EigenLayer AVSs. There's been a noticeable uptick in teams assessing AVSs for operators and LRTs. These posts should give you a sense on how some of them are trying to approach this topic.

Welcome to the second week of Validator digest! I am starting off this week by sharing a list I've compiled to track all the EigenLayer AVS that have been announced so far. I am certain there are many that I am missing, so take a look and let me know what I need to add.

Welcome to the first ever Validator digest! Do you run nodes that help secure blockchains? Are you a protocol specialist keeping track of protocol upgrades and governance? Are you a devops engineer tasked with monitoring protocols? This newsletter is dedicated to you, to help you become better informed on developments that concern you as a validator.