Vitalik Buterin supports lowering Ethereum solo staking requirement
2024-10-03

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has recognized the importance of lowering the minimum Ether required for crypto investors to earn passive income via solo staking.
On Oct. 3, Buterin joined a community discussion on X to support the idea of lowering the minimum Ether ETHUSD deposit requirement for solo stakers. 
Solo stakers run full nodes using private computer equipment without relying on third-party services, centralized entities or staking pools to run. However, the current requirement of locking up 32 ETH is a deterrent to broader participation. 
In September, Buterin highlighted the importance of solo stakers in strengthening Ethereum’s security and decentralization during the Ethereum Singapore 2024 event. 
Importance of solo stakers in true decentralization
According to Buterin, even a small percentage of solo stakers can add an important decentralized layer of protection for Ethereum and help defend the network against 51% attacks. He said at the time:
In his recent interaction with community members, Vitalik highlighted ideas for nurturing a bigger community of solo stakes. His temporary solution involved increasing the bandwidth requirement in exchange for dropping the minimum staking deposit mandate to 16 or 24 ETH.
However, an Ethereum dev pointed out that bandwidth available to home networks depends on their physical location and could work against the intended cause.
Reducing solo staking requirement to 1 ETH
Buterin believed his temporary solution could make solo staking affordable and scalable. He added:
Dropping the minimum requirement for Ethereum solo staking to 1 ETH can promote higher participation, which will, in turn, make ETH more decentralized. 
Recently, Buterin decided to act against Ethereum projects that claim to be layer-2 networks based purely on technicalities. 
He stated that all Ethereum layer 2s must reach “Stage 1” by the end of 2024. If they do not, the community should no longer refer to them as layer 2s.