Identification
ChainSafe is a leading blockchain R&D firm and infrastructure provider headquartered in Toronto, Canada. Uniquely positioned at the intersection of protocol engineering and infrastructure operations, we are the authors and lead maintainers of Lodestar, the Ethereum Consensus client.
ChainSafe currently manages over $890M USD in assets, with 222,304 ETH staked across more than 6,900 active validators in the Lido Curated Module. ChainSafe has established a distinguished operational track record, consistently ranking in the top 10% RAVER Score for Lido nodes in the Curated Module.
Beyond core infrastructure, our dual role as protocol developers gives us deep insight into the technical needs of the network. We are active contributors to the Ethereum ecosystem, supporting early-stage testnets (Ephemery, Holesky, Hoodi) and powering critical infrastructure for networks like Filecoin and Polkadot. We are also active in staking within ecosystems like Kusama, Polkadot, Celestia, Aztec, zkVerify, and Canton.
Request: We are formally requesting to be identified as a Tier 1 stVault Professional Operator within a DVT cluster category. Our specific objective is to collaborate on the Lido v3 stVaults framework, positioning ChainSafe as a partner for building and operating large-scale, institutional-grade staking infrastructure.
Business Case
ChainSafe’s immediate focus is on collaborative ecosystem growth. In the first step, we will be partnering with other Ethereum infrastructure providers and contributors to enable the launch of a DVT cluster for the Lido v3 stVaults. Eventually, following the successful deployment of collaborative DVT infrastructure, ChainSafe intends to launch dedicated stVaults independently.
On our own stVault, we are considering starting with a portion of our own ETH and then incrementally adding more partners from our value-aligned network, potentially including investors and VCs.
With this focus in mind, we are enabling:
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Advanced Risk/Reward Strategies: Utilizing restaking and sidecar modules to enable user-defined strategies and higher APRs.
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DVT-First Architecture: Working directly with infrastructure partners to deploy distributed validator technology (DVT) that reduces single-point-of-failure risks, making staking more resilient, higher-performing, and more decentralized.
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Protocol-Aligned Operations: Leveraging our deep knowledge as Lodestar developers to ensure robust, client-diverse infrastructure.
Ops & Decentralization
ChainSafe runs a highly diversified setup, directly contributing to client diversity through our authorship of Lodestar:
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Consensus Clients: Lodestar (Primary/Author), Teku, Lighthouse
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Execution Clients: Nethermind, Geth, Reth
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Distributed Validation: Charon client on Obol
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Monitoring: 24x7 performance monitoring and alerting, via open-telemetry and on-chain operational data.
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Very regular communication and updates with other Node Operators, Client Teams, the Protocol Guild and the EF.
Infrastructure Footprint and Geo / Jurisdiction Diversity
We have designed our infrastructure for high availability and deterministic builds. We have validators hosted across diverse bare-metal providers and hyperscalers, with redundancy through globally distributed regions.
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Node Distribution: Lido Nodes are distributed across four continents and multiple providers, covering Europe, North America, Asia and Africa.
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Deployment: ChainSafe deploys all validators and supporting infrastructure using Infrastructure-as-Code, allowing us to be extremely portable and predictable across hosting services and resilient during disaster recovery.
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Security: All servers have ports locked down, excluding only those required for validation and a non-standard SSH port. ChainSafe pushes logs and metrics to an external host, with redundant rescue nodes available for disaster recovery. Air-gapped key administration processes are in place, with slashing protection mechanisms enabled.
MEV Posture
We currently use Commit-Boost, a modular commit-reveal sidecar, allowing better validator performance monitoring in real-time, utilizing open and transparent relays.
Links
(I can’t add any links right now, probably due to new profile restrictions, but it should be easy enough to find Chainsafe and infra.chainsafe on the internet and on github or X)