On February 24, 2026, the Ethereum Foundation (EF) launched a 70,000 ETH staking program, with the news of the first 2016 ETH completed staking disclosed, adding new yield and security dimensions to the previously static treasury assets. This action was explicitly included in its “Sustainable Treasury Strategy” proposed in 2025 and is seen as a transition from simply holding assets to actively operating them. Conflicts have emerged around this decision: on one hand, the EF hopes to support long-term research and public goods funding through treasury appreciation; on the other hand, Ethereum has always focused on transparency and decentralization, raising questions in the community about whether large-scale staking by the foundation will change power distribution and network structure. The real question to answer next is how the entry of this 70,000 ETH will reshape Ethereum's security landscape and staking pattern, and what new role the foundation will play in it.
Perspective Breakdown
● Scale and treasury proportion: According to public information, the EF's current plan to stake a total of 70,000 ETH, with the first batch of 2016 ETH already completed on-chain staking, serving as the initial sample for the entire plan. Research briefs indicate that this portion of assets accounts for approximately 15%-20% (to be verified) of the known treasury size, suggesting that this is not an experimental test but a significant configuration ratio that can impact the treasury structure, reflecting the foundation's medium to long-term commitment and risk tolerance for staking.
● Change in stance: Compared to the previous treasury management style that was more “passive in holding coins and disbursing when necessary,” this time participating directly in staking at the consensus layer is a clear shift from “standing on the sidelines” to “stepping onto the field.” In the past, the foundation often maintained restraint at the economic level, playing the role of rule designer and funding party; now it openly participates in the validator network as a large holder, adding dual labels of “asset operator” and “security participant” to its role definition.
● Demonstration and signal: As one of the most symbolic institutions in the Ethereum ecosystem, the EF's public disclosure of the staking plan and technical choices itself sends out a strong signal. On one hand, it enhances market confidence in the security and institutional stability of ETH staking; on the other hand, it sets an operational template for other large holders, institutions, and foundations on “how to do staking,” making staking seem like a replicable and scrutinizable institutional practice rather than a black-box operation.
● Transparent boundaries: Although the EF has publicly disclosed the staking scale and key technical routes, it remains silent on aspects like node geographical distribution and the list of custodial service providers. Research briefs clarify that these details are currently not disclosed, and external parties cannot assess the specific degree of decentralization regarding the judiciary jurisdiction of nodes, nor verify the compliance qualifications of the custodians. This “partially transparent, partially left blank” information boundary aligns with the realistic considerations of institutional operations while leaving a blank space for community discussions on concentration and audit risks.
Narrative Interweaving
● Distributed signing and single source: According to a single public source, the EF has adopted AttestantIO’s Dirk distributed signing solution for this staking, utilizing Vouch to implement a multi-client strategy. This means that keys are not stored in a single device or operated by a single party but are collectively completed by multiple participants through threshold signing mechanisms, and this information mainly comes from AttestantIO's technical materials, which must be considered a single source and cited cautiously.
● Multi-jurisdiction reducing concentration risk: AttestantIO's technical documentation states, “Multi-jurisdiction distributed signing significantly reduces single point failure risks.” From both a safety and compliance perspective, distributing signing participants across different jurisdictions can weaken the ability of a single country or regulatory body to pressure points for obtaining or freezing keys, and it also reduces the impact on the entire validator cluster in case of a single operator outage or hack, marking a proactive upgrade from the traditional “single custody + cold storage” model.
● Client diversity and minority choices: The EF has long promoted client diversity within the community, encouraging validators to use execution layer and consensus layer clients developed by different teams to avoid systemic risks of “single client failures collapsing the entire network.” According to research briefs, this staking node has selected some minority clients and adopted a mixed architecture of self-managed hardware and custodial infrastructure, contributing real load and operational data for these clients in practice, thereby helping to decentralize risk at the network layer and strengthening the technical foundation of the decentralization narrative.
● Deliberate omissions of technical details: Despite the keyword “mixed architecture” being mentioned multiple times, key information such as the specific configuration ratios of self-managed hardware and custodial infrastructure has not been disclosed and is marked as prohibited from inference and fabrication. This means that outsiders cannot reconstruct a complete system diagram from the current information, nor can they assess its precise impact on reliability and costs, and can only speculate based on existing technical materials about EF's desire to find some balance between sovereign control, operational professionalism, and compliant custody.
Deep Game of Strategies
From the “interest generation” of the treasury to public goods financing, EF’s narrative choice in this staking is highly targeted. The EF officially stated that 100% of staking rewards will be reinvested back into protocol development and ecosystem building, not entering any private or shareholder accounts, but positioned as a source of funding for client support, infrastructure, researchers, and community projects. This commitment attempts to transform staking from a “financial arbitrage tool” into a “public goods financing mechanism,” diminishing speculative elements, enhancing public attributes, and reinforcing the original cultural foundation of Ethereum as a “non-profit, open protocol.”
Meanwhile, this action is also directly embedded in the “Sustainable Treasury Strategy” proposed in 2025. Long-term research and public goods funding naturally require predictable cash flow, while one-time token sales or donations are challenging to match the funding time scale required for long-term infrastructures like Ethereum. By staking to obtain relatively stable network-level revenue, the EF can cushion funding for research and maintenance over the coming years or even a decade without continuously depleting holding ratios, thereby smoothing expenses between bull and bear cycles. This “self-generated output rebounding into protocol development” cyclical model is also a dream many public chain foundations have yet to realize.
However, the staking rewards themselves are not fixed values within the ETH network and will be influenced by multiple variables such as on-chain activity, overall staking ratios, and slashing events. The research brief clearly points out that the EF has not disclosed specific annualized yield calculation models and has made no quantified commitments regarding future returns, implying that external analyses should not infer yields or absolute amounts at this stage to avoid reinforcing the stereotype that “EF is profiting from itself.” In this uncertain environment, EF is more betting on a structural source of yield rather than simply pursuing short-term financial returns.
Potential points of controversy lie in role overlap: EF is both a core driver of protocol upgrades and parameter adjustments while becoming a direct beneficiary of staking rewards, leading others to easily question whether it is “both referee and player.” Even if the EF lacks mandatory voting rights in governance, its agenda-setting power and discourse still remain significant. How to ensure a transparent governance process, public financial reports, and multi-party oversight will be key issues tested repeatedly in the coming years to earn the community’s trust that EF will not use technical and information advantages to bias its own gains but will genuinely utilize staking rewards for public goods.
Strategic Recommendations
In the future, discussions surrounding EF staking will inevitably return to the old questions of decentralization vs. power concentration. From a technical perspective, the foundation's inclusion of 70,000 ETH into the validator pool undoubtedly enhances the overall economic security of the network: more actively locked ETH means higher attack costs, and as a subject of “long-term holding + public commitment,” the foundation theoretically faces less risk of engaging in malicious behavior compared to short-term speculators. However, at the narrative level, such a volume of “official participant nodes” inevitably raises concerns about “whether the protocol is becoming increasingly reliant on a single institution,” especially in the context of nodes' geographical distribution and operational details being not fully transparent.
This tension is particularly prominent between client diversity and large-scale staking. On one hand, the EF provides real operational scenarios for minority clients through its actual actions, which reinforces decentralization for the entire network from a risk management perspective; on the other hand, when a single institution influences both client paths and controls a large number of validators, the community cannot help but question: is this truly diversifying risk, or does it form an “upgraded centralization” on a new level? The stark contrast between transparent disclosure and information gaps - the foundation is willing to publicly share overall scale, revenue directions, and technology stack but remains silent on node distribution and custody details - allows for “visible decentralization” and “invisible concentration” to coexist within the same narrative.
Different stakeholders also have their calculations regarding the changes in EF’s role. Ordinary stakers may hope the foundation demonstrates more security practices and maintains protocol stability while also fearing their relative marginalization in governance and narrative; professional service providers may benefit from market expansion due to demonstrated effects but may also feel the competitive and regulatory thresholds have been indirectly raised; core developers and researchers need to find a balance between “available funds” and “maintaining independence” to avoid the research agenda becoming overly centered around maximizing staking rewards at the expense of the protocol's long-term public interest. These divergences will not be resolved in the short term, but will continue to shape the political and economic ecology of Ethereum in the coming years.
From a broader perspective, EF's current staking also invisibly outlines a “model path” for institutional-level staking. Distributed signing, multi-client strategies, and mixed infrastructure combine to form a design blueprint that addresses compliance, security, and operability:
On one hand, traditional financial institutions or large corporations looking to engage in ETH staking can retain key sovereign authority and reduce their absolute dependence on a single custodian by adopting similar distributed signing and threshold permissions models without completely abandoning custodial convenience; on the other hand, they can also refer to the EF’s diversified strategy in client selection to re-split regulatory risks, technological risks, and operational costs, rather than simply following the client or service provider with the highest market share.
More broadly, as a “public institution-type holder,” the EF's choice to boldly demonstrate staking also sets a governance and financial narrative that can be referenced for other public chain foundations, DAO treasuries, and early teams: foundations do not have to be merely passive funding “agencies,” but can participate in network operations through intrinsic mechanisms of the protocol, forming a self-sustaining structure of public goods financing. This demonstration effect may encourage more projects to reevaluate their treasury configurations, thus spurring a wave of followers in the “foundation staking model.”
Correspondingly, there is potential game-playing with commercial staking service providers. On one hand, the foundation's involvement increases the visibility and trustworthiness of the entire industry, effectively providing free advertising to the market, facilitating the expansion of the overall staking pie; on the other hand, as best practices begin to be defined as combinations of “distributed signing + multi-client + mixed architecture,” the industry entry barriers are also invisibly raised, and small and medium service providers may face heightened compliance and technical pressures, potentially forcing them out of certain high-end institutional markets. Whether the foundation is helping the industry grow or reshaping the rules of the game will depend on whether subsequent developments include open-source tools, shared infrastructure, and broader knowledge transfer.
The Treasury Game Above the Protocol and the Next Act
In summary, the EF’s staking action has profound effects along three main lines: in network security, by locking up 70,000 ETH and introducing distributed signing and multi-client operations, it has increased both economic and technical dual lines of defense; in staking economics, the foundation has bound public treasury and validator rewards, shifting the narrative of staking from a personal arbitrage tool to a public goods financing mechanism; in institutional participation paradigms, EF’s use of mixed architectures and multi-jurisdiction practices has provided a reference “security + compliance” template for various institutions looking to enter Ethereum in the future.
At the same time, this analysis must clearly recognize its cognitive boundaries: in the absence of key information such as node geographical distributions, custodian service provider lists, and yield model details, the external parties cannot responsibly provide quantitative conclusions about the< strong> actual concentration of EF staking within the network and the< strong> true reward levels. Content marked as pending verification or prohibited from fabrication in research briefs must remain blank to avoid filling it with imagination, as this is responsible both to the readers and to the decentralization discussion itself.
Important indicators to observe moving forward include: whether the EF will continue to expand the staking scale beyond the current 70,000 ETH plan or convert more treasury assets into active operations; whether the community's actual adoption rate of multi-client and distributed signing solutions increases as a result, creating technological migration from foundation demonstration to network-wide diffusion; and whether other public chain foundations, DAOs, and large institutions will follow similar models, making “public treasury participation in staking” a new industry norm. Each subsequent move will further shape Ethereum's structure in security, economy, and governance dimensions.
Ultimately, the unavoidable question remains: how much room for trial and error does Ethereum leave the foundation between protocol security and power checks? The EF's bet of 70,000 ETH is an active redefinition of its role boundary and a long-term experiment conducted on the global public stage. The success or failure of this experiment is not only related to Ethereum's security ceiling and decentralization floor but will also provide a mirror for the entire crypto industry—prompting everyone to rethink what kind of power structure and trust model we are genuinely willing to accept when public protocols begin to “make the treasury run.”
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