Lido Node Operators Surge 9.46% in Q3 2025 with DVT Adoption Rising

1. Lido’s Node Operator set grew 9.46% in Q3 2025, with DVT adoption expanding to 17,124 validators.
2. Community Staking Module (CSM) stake limit increased to 5% following strong growth.
3. Curated Module now features enhanced client diversity and Auxiliary Proposer Mechanisms for improved fault tolerance.

Lido’s validator and node operator ecosystem continued to grow in Q3 2025, registering a 9.46% increase in node operators, adding 59 new participants primarily through the Community Staking Module (CSM).

By October 1, roughly 545,000 ETH was staked across the Simple DVT Module (SDVTM), CSM, and SSV Network, reflecting ongoing decentralization efforts. Both SDVTM and CSM reached their stake share limits of 4% and 3%, together accounting for around 600,000 staked ETH, or 1.67% of total Ethereum staking.

The CSM posted the strongest module growth, adding 72,448 ETH (+0.99 percentage points) and hitting its 3% cap, which was later raised to 5% under the CSM v2 upgrade. The SDVTM added 32,224 ETH (+0.61pp), fully allocating all Obol, SSV, and Super Clusters.

Conversely, the Curated Module saw a 1.59pp decrease (680,032 ETH) due to withdrawals, including a precautionary exit of 6,983 validators after the Kiln security incident. Reallocation efforts, such as Pier Two increasing validators from 1,000 to 3,766, helped maintain stake balance across the module.

Distributed Validator Technology Drives Decentralization

The adoption rate of Distributed Validator Technology (DVT) solutions in Lido continued to gain momentum. The network now supports 547,968 ETH (17,124 validators) through the DVT solutions from Obol, SafeStake, and SSV Network.

This is an increase of 57.65% from Q2 2025. The initial five leaders of the Curated Module achieved the migration of 4,900 (156,800 ETH) validators onto the DVT solutions for Obol & SSV.

Within the SDVTM network, 5,300 validators are utilizing Obol, while 5,342 are on the SSV Network, maintained by 217 and 229 node operators, respectively. Adoption in CSM also continued to increase, complemented by 332 and 66 SSV Network and Obol users.

SafeStake in the CSM is also constant at eight validators. It is noteworthy that the use of DVT in both permissionless and curated modules is a major advancement in the process of Ethereum validation decentralization.

Lido Strengthens Client Diversity

The Curated Module from Lido enhances client diversity against supermajority and finality risks. Market leaders are nonetheless Lighthouse at 26.7%, Vouch 22.59%, Teku 18.52%, Prysm 15.44%, and Nimbus 11.77%.

The adoption of the Auxiliary Proposer Mechanisms (APMs), which include PBS and MEV-Boost, has been increasing to optimize the efficiency of building blocks, where about half of the validators support MEV-Boost. Other APMs also being used are Vouch and Commit Boost. Native MEV Boost support constitutes only 2.8% of the support.

Looking forward, the upgrade to CSM v2, the adoption of DVT in the Curated Module, and also the coming upgrade to Lido V3 and Staking Router v3 are poised to bring about greater flexibility and modularity in the protocol. This will be a reaffirmation of the policy at Lido of supporting the development of a secure and decentralized Ethereum validator network.

Also Read: Lido DAO 2026 Plan: Boosting LDO Utility While Reducing Token Supply