The impressive growth of the Ethereum staking sector has made it one of blockchain’s most explosive verticals. However, this rapid growth has given rise to a new concern of centralization risk. In cases where custodial staking services manage thousands of validators on the network, the risk of a single point of failure becomes more significant.
Regardless of how well these entities operate, allowing this undue influence to grow runs counter to Ethereum’s goals of secure, decentralized scalability. This is why Origin Ether has added support for distributed validator technology, powered by ssv.network and P2P.org. Let’s take a look at how DVT works, and how OETH holders benefit from the implementation.
Distributed Validator Technology (DVT) is a novel technology that addresses issues of centralization by splitting and distributing keys among multiple node operators, thus making node running far more secure and reliable. This marks a distinct departure from traditional mechanics, where a single node operator is tasked with managing all responsibilities.
Rather than using single keys to manage validators, DVT splits these private keys and distributes keyshares to multiple node operators, responsible for maintaining validators.
This structure vastly reduces risk of centralization due to ownership being less concentrated. Rather than relying on a single entity signing transactions from a single machine, DVT allows node operations to be substantially more decentralized through multiple operators.
From a technical standpoint, DVT implements a number of innovations. For example, distributed key generation (DKG) allows participants to generate private keys as “shares”, allowing the key to be split amongst multiple operators without a single participant knowing the entire key. DKG utilizes Shamir’s secret sharing to split the keys before generating key shares. Meanwhile, Multi Party Computation (MPC) is employed to reconstruct the private keys in secret. This way, operators only know their own share of the key.
In practice, nodes are selected by consensus protocols to propose new blocks in a DVT cluster. Proposed blocks are validated by operators adding their key shares to a signature, requiring a majority of keyshares in a similar vein to a multi-sig wallet. Once a block has passed this threshold, the cluster proposes the new block on the network.
DVT’s security base is further enhanced through the inclusion of Istanbul byzantine fault tolerance (BFT), which ensures that validators can still run effectively even if certain operators break network rules.
Origin Ether utilizes both SSV Network and P2P.org to integrate DVT. SSV’s decentralized staking network empowers stakers to split and distribute validator keys across multiple KeyShares, thus simplifying the process of running a validator with multiple independent nodes.
Meanwhile, P2P’s API facilitates access to SSV network’s decentralized validator technology. P2P is also tasked with managing active nodes in Origin Ether’s SSV cluster.
P2P offers stakers an API for node management and operations. The institutional staking powerhouse serves nearly 400,000 staked ETH across more than 12,000 validators.
Drawing on P2P’s node management expertise has allowed Origin Ether to integrate DVT staking seamlessly via SSV, placing OETH firmly at the forefront of LST innovation. P2P manages Origin Ether’s SSV cluster with their expertise in Ethereum staking, ensuring that node operations remain secure and efficient.
SSV’s secure, scalable infrastructure empowers ETH stakers to build effectively with DVT. More than 1M ETH has been staked via ssv.network across over 32,000 validators. Origin Ether leverages SSV to stake ETH to the beacon chain, which also allows OETH to generate additional SSV token incentives that boost OETH yield.
This design implements DVT for OETH, providing the technical foundations for distributed scaling and more competitive yield.
Origin Ether’s DVT integration for native ETH staking highlights a continued emphasis on building technology that upholds crypto’s core tenets of decentralization, security, and user-first scaling. Considered together with OETH’s robust mechanics and superior peg-keeping, Origin Ether is primed to continue cementing its position as the superior LST on Ethereum and beyond.
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