Lido reports 40% of staked ETH now running on 0x02 validators

Ethereum’s validator set is in the middle of a quiet renovation. According to an update tied to Lido, staked ETH sitting on 0x02 validators has now reached 40%. The move came from two sources. Around 1.8 million ETH migrated over from older 0x01 validators, and total ETH staked on 0x02 validators rose by 2.8 million. What changed, and why validators are moving Ethereum’s Pectra hard fork in May 2025 changed the rules through EIP-7251. Validators using the newer 0x02 type can now carry an effective balance of up to 2,048 ETH. Bigger stakes fit into one validator, and rewards can compound instead of stalling at a fixed ceiling. Lido, Ethereum’s leading liquid staking protocol, has leaned into this hard. Its Curated Module v2, or CMv2, launched on July 27, 2026. The plan is to consolidate over 8 million ETH, worth approximately $16 billion at the time, from more than 265,000 legacy validators into an estimated 4,000 active 0x02 validators. Those 8 million ETH represent around 20% of all staked ETH. Collapsing 265,000 validators into roughly 4,000 is the staking equivalent of merging a sprawling office park into a single tower. The numbers behind the shift The consolidation has already...