There has never been a better time to be a solo staker on Ethereum.

From the lower financial and technical barriers to entry to the abundant opportunities with ETH staking projects, the stage is set for the rise of a new class — the “sovereign staker”.

The lowering barriers to entry

Running your own validator node was historically an exclusive activity.

You needed both the financial (32 ETH) and technical (Linux systems admin) chops to participate, and many individuals did not have one or both components.

This is why liquid staking — abstracting both requirements away from the everyday user — is one of the most popular DeFi use cases today (US$27bn TVL).

However, both requirements are becoming easier to fulfil for individuals today.

On the financial side, liquid staking technologies (LSTs) allow node operators to get started with way less than 32 ETH — e.g.

1. Rocketpool: 10.4 ETH, of which 2.4 ETH is in RPL tokens

2. Stader Labs: 4.4 ETH, of which 0.4 ETH is in SD tokens

3. Diva Staking: 1 ETH

4. Lido Simple DVT: 0 ETH, limited time

5. Lido Community Staking Module: TBC

6. NodeSet: 0 ETH

Sweetening the deal further, hardware grants from the Ethereum Foundation (plus others coming soon!) will offset your fixed costs of US$800.

On the technical side, the level of community support and quality of documentation/guides is unprecedented — e.g.

1. Community support:

   1. ETHStaker reddit and discord for general community support

   2. Stakesaurus Telegram group for beginner-level support

   3. ETH client teams’ discord for specific questions

2. Step-by-step guides

   1. CoinCashew

   2. Somer Esat

   3. Stakesaurus — I designed this specifically to get laymen from zero to one conceptually and technically 🙂. Do check out the guides of my predecessors above for more technical details.

So, if the free market is making things easier for solo stakers, you can probably guess where the US$27bn liquid staking TVL is headed.

The abundant opportunities

With an easier time getting started with your own validator node, you will now be able to rack up hands-on experience and an on-chain track record to showcase your proficiency.

This will then enable you to participate in emerging testnet initiatives of new LSTs and other ETH staking projects. Doing this will allow you to build off-chain reputation with the projects you participate in and likely earn yourself a priority when it comes time for them to allocate TVL to solo stakers.

Some testnet initiatives you can participate in today:

1. Lido: Simple DVT, Community Staking Module

2. Diva Staking

3. NodeSet

4. Stader DVT: TBC

PS: You only need a single set of hardware to participate in all initiatives.

For the end game, you could then spin up your own liquid staking pool using Stakewise V3 and start to attract your own TVL 😎 — I describe a way to do that here.

The Solo Staker’s Roadmap

Given the exciting developments, let’s distil them into a roadmap for solo stakers.

So there you go. This is the new meta — The golden age of solo stakers.

Check us out!

Feel free to reach me on Telegram if you’d like to know more about upcoming testnet initiatives you can participate in as a solo staker — https://t.me/samuelclk

Check out our very own Stakesaurus liquid staking pool and consider staking some ETH with us to support our work of growing the solo staking community in SEA — https://app.stakewise.io/vault/0x649955f4189c3921df60e25f58cb1e81070fedb0

*We use only minority clients for the safety of our stakers

For more of my writings or to know more about us, visit our LinkTree — https://linktr.ee/stakesaurus