Pooled staking

What are staking pools?

Staking pools are a collaborative approach to allow many with smaller amounts of ETH to obtain the 32 ETH required to activate a set of validator keys. Pooling functionality is not natively supported within the protocol, so solutions were built out separately to address this need.

Some pools operate using smart contracts, where funds can be deposited to a contract, which trustlessly manages and tracks your stake, and issues you a token that represents this value. Other pools may not involve smart contracts and are instead mediated offchain.

Why stake with a pool?

In addition to the benefits we outlined in our intro to staking, staking with a pool comes with a number of distinct benefits.

What to consider

Pooled or delegated staking is not natively supported by the Ethereum protocol, but given the demand for users to stake less than 32 ETH a growing number of solutions have been built out to serve this demand.

Each pool and the tools or smart contracts they use have been built out by different teams, and each comes with benefits and risks. Pools enable users to swap their ETH for a token representing staked ETH. The token is useful because it allows users to swap any amount of ETH to an equivalent amount of a yield-bearing token that generates a return from the staking rewards applied to the underlying staked ETH (and vice versa) on decentralized exchanges even though the actual ETH stays staked on the consensus layer. This means swaps back and forth from a yield-bearing staked-ETH product and "raw ETH" is quick, easy and not only available in multiples of 32 ETH.

However, these staked-ETH tokens tend to create cartel-like behaviors where a large amount of staked ETH ends up under the control of a few centralized organizations rather than spread across many independent individuals. This creates conditions for censorship or value extraction. The gold standard for staking should always be individuals running validators on their own hardware whenever possible.

More on risks of staking tokens(opens in a new tab).

Attribute indicators are used below to signal notable strengths or weaknesses a listed staking pool may have. Use this section as a reference for how we define these attributes while you're choosing a pool to join.

Explore staking pools

There are a variety of options available to help you with your setup. Use the above indicators to help guide you through the tools below.

Please note the importance of choosing a service that takes client diversity seriously, as it improves the security of the network, and limits your risk. Services that have evidence of limiting majority client use are indicated with "execution client diversity" and "consensus client diversity."

Have a suggestion for a staking tool we missed? Check out our product listing policy to see if it would be a good fit, and to submit it for review.

Frequently asked questions

Further reading

• The Ethereum Staking Directory(opens in a new tab) - Eridian and Spacesider
• Staking with Rocket Pool - Staking Overview(opens in a new tab) - RocketPool docs
• Staking Ethereum With Lido(opens in a new tab) - Lido help docs