Lido starts moving $16 billion in staked ETH into larger validators

Lido has begun consolidating approximately $16 billion in staked ETH into larger validators following the rollout of its Curated Module v2.

Lido Core 2026 Upgrade

The biggest evolution of Lido Core brings improvements across the staking modules to keep the protocol aligned with Ethereum’s roadmap and ensure long-term protocol sustainability.

No action is required from stakers – the upgrade is protocol-level.

↓ pic.twitter.com/VS5M59QiGh

— Lido (@LidoFinance) July 27, 2026

The migration will move ETH from legacy validators capped at 32 ETH into new 0x02 validators that can each hold an effective balance of up to 2,048 ETH. The functionality was introduced through Ethereum’s Pectra upgrade and is supported by Lido’s new balance based accounting system.

Curated Module v2 will initially seed approximately 3,882 new validator keys with 124,224 ETH. The remaining 7.82 million ETH managed by the module will then be consolidated into the new validator structure, according to an analysis of the migration design.

Consolidation allows Lido to reduce the number of validators it operates without withdrawing and restaking the underlying ETH. The change is expected to lower operational overhead and reduce the number of attestation messages processed by the Ethereum network.

The migration is constrained by Ethereum’s consolidation queue and could take at least 117 days under ideal conditions. Lido previously said the broader migration would occur in phases and could continue into the first quarter of 2027.

Lido DAO approved Curated Module v2 alongside an upgrade to Community Staking Module v3 on July 23. The proposal subsequently entered Lido’s Dual Governance review process ahead of its mainnet deployment.