TechFlow News — Vitalik Buterin has published a proposal for simplifying Proof-of-Stake (PoS), suggesting a design that requires only 8,192 signatures per slot—even under SSF—aiming to make the consensus mechanism simpler and lighter.
Vitalik outlined three potential approaches: decentralized staking pools; two-tiered staking; and rotating participation (e.g., via committees).
The first approach focuses on decentralized staking pools. It would increase the minimum deposit required to run a validator node to 4,096 ETH and encourage resource consolidation among validators.
The second method is two-tiered staking, where a "heavy" layer requires 4,096 ETH in stake and participates in finalization, while a "light" layer has no minimum stake requirement (and no deposit or withdrawal delays). The two layers would be treated differently during the block finalization process.
The third approach involves having a rotating set of participants, similar to a committee system, meaning a random group of validators is selected for each slot. This would distribute workload and reduce the total number of signatures, though it would increase protocol complexity. Its advantage lies in preserving individual staking in an identifiable manner, maintaining a single-layer system, and even allowing the minimum deposit size to be reduced to very low levels (e.g., 1 ETH).
Vitalik emphasized the desire to stick with 8,192 signatures, which would simplify work for implementers and builders of side infrastructure such as light clients. Ethereum’s future protocol load would no longer be an unknown: future hard forks could increase the load, but only if developers are confident that technology has advanced sufficiently to handle slots with more signatures at the same efficiency. The remaining task is to decide which of the above three methods—or some other alternative—to adopt.
