Thanks Tony and team for the revised post - the additional detail is appreciated, especially around the pod architecture, circuit breaker roadmap, and the planned Vero evaluation.
A few points I want to flag for the community’s consideration:
Context on the change:
When the CryptoManufaktur acquisition was brought to the DAO, the original post stated that infrastructure would remain as-is and the same team would continue to maintain it. This proposal represents a change - both in the validator client stack (Vouch/Dirk to Lighthouse/Web3signer) and in the team operating the infrastructure given the departure of most of the Cryptomanufaktur team members. Galaxy has been very transparent about this in both discussion with Lido DAO NOM contributors and via this update.
Client diversity:
While Lighthouse currently represents roughly half of the network’s consensus layer usage, it’s worth noting that the migration here is limited to the validator client layer - Galaxy will continue running multiple EL/CL pairs with Besu/Teku primary, and Lighthouse/Geth and Lighthouse/Nethermind as backup. The risk profile from a VC-only Lighthouse deployment is meaningfully different from running Lighthouse as both VC and BN.
That said, this is still a move toward the dominant client on one layer, and it’s encouraging to see Galaxy committing to both testing the Lighthouse circuit breaker PR and evaluating Vero as complementary mitigations.
Overall:
It is helpful to also understand that the proposed migration would take place during the CMv1 to CMv2 migration via the use of consolidations to the new infrastructure setup. This is generally a very secure way to conduct such a migration, and in general if a team were to make a significant infrastructure change, this is a very opportune time to do so.
The commitments around circuit breaker testing, Vero evaluation, and client diversity monitoring are meaningful. I think publishing the Hoodi test results and circuit breaker findings on the forum as outlined would be very helpful for the entire operator set, and continue to showcase the technical leadership that we have seen historically from Galaxy/Cryptomanufaktur as a member of the Lido Curated Set.
I’d welcome others to weigh in on the proposal, and will be sharing this with the Curated Module Committee for any other feedback.