Hi @stefa2k, thank you for taking the time to respond to the proposal.
The goal of this proposal is to bring the Curated Module’s economics in line with the current reality of Ethereum staking where competition has increased, margins have narrowed, and the protocol needs to stay both resilient and adaptable.
Curated Operators have held a uniquely trusted and rewarding position that helped the protocol scale safely. At the same time, the DAO can’t afford to hollow out quality or decentralization by underpricing the real cost of professional operation. The intent here is balance: a baseline that reflects a fee closer to the market rate, with additional recognition for those contributing directly to the protocol’s growth, decentralization, and governance in significant and consistent ways.
The majority of Node Operators would qualify as Standard Tier under the proposal: 67% of Curated Node Operators were proposed for Standard Tier, 19% for Client Team, and 14% for Extra Effort.
I will try to go through and respond to the number of points you made.
What I can tell you with certainty, is that none of the reasons you mentioned are the specific driver of your proposed inclusion as a Standard Tier operator.
As mentioned in the proposal above, the Node Operators that are proposed for Extra Effort were all regarded highly across a combination of different contributing factors by Lido DAO contributors in the Node Operator Mechanisms workstream.
While some Node Operators were quite strong on certain aspects, the ones proposed were generally strong across a number of the factors we considered, as mentioned in the original post.
It’s also worth noting that for the Node Operators that were strong in one area, we gave suggestions as to how they can improve in the communication sent to them (including RockLogic). For example, with stVaults launching in a few weeks, it presents a very strong opportunity for Node Operators to grow their own businesses while also supporting the growth of the protocol.
Recommending solo staking and building open source public goods are positives from my perspective. Solo staking is the gold standard on Ethereum, and you can find recordings of multiple Lido Contributors during presentations suggesting that they hope Node Operators can get their start in things like Simple DVT & CSM as they work up the required 32 ETH to truly solo stake.
Other Node Operators also develop public goods and recommend solo staking, yet also actively seek to drive inflows to the protocol.
In the case of RockLogic and Stereum specifically, the Lido DAO has been supportive with numerous grants, both before CSM was launched and as part of increasing the tooling options available for CSM Node Operators to permissionlessly participate in the protocol.
I have a very different view here personally. I think that as a Curated Set Node Operator, someone that provides services to and receives rewards from the protocol as set by the DAO, Curated Node Operators should be deeply involved in the governance processes related to the protocol.
Many Node Operators participate in governance - this response is participation in governance - and that effort is valued by both contributors and the broader community to understand different perspectives regarding development of the protocol.
If you hold LDO and disagree with the proposal, I would highly encourage you to vote against it - that’s the point of open governance, and one of the reasons I think it is an important criteria to be weighted in terms of a Node Operators’ “Extra Effort” towards the protocol.
The Node Operators suggested for the Extra Effort Tier were considered very strong contributors across the combined set of metrics: historical ETH inflows to the protocol, participation in Lido DAO governance (including voting with LDO), contributions to infrastructure decentralization, participation in testing programs, and ecosystem & public goods work. It’s worth noting specifically here that for Extra Effort, public goods work is one of the factors - not a sole driver of the proposal (whereas the Client Team Tier is specifically designed to support public goods related to Ethereum mainnet EL/BN/VC development).
From my perspective regarding Extra Effort, there are two major components that I would like to see Node Operators do more of: 1. Build & use products that work with stETH at the core, and/or drive inflows to Lido, and 2. Participate in Lido DAO governance (especially via voting).
The protocol has seen significant outflows over the past two years, with much of that moving to more centralized setups, including, in some cases, to Lido Node Operators themselves, who are offering significantly lower fees than they receive from protocol-driven stake.
Node Operators are allocated stake from Lido with very little cost of revenue acquisition - they are onboarded, and then receive stake following the programmatic deposit allocation strategy. This means there is little incentive for Node Operators to support the growth of the protocol, most only benefit from the inflows. While ecosystem participation and development and support of public goods are important in this industry, and are things that Lido DAO has supported throughout the years, both via grants as well as by giving these participants the opportunity to be onboarded to the Curated Set, the “Extra Effort” category is not meant to simply be an extension of this. Rather, “Extra Effort” is an attempt to identify operators who have contributed uniquely to the Lido ecosystem through some combination of public goods work, decentralization efforts, and (very importantly) development of stETH related products and/or protocol inflows.
On the second point, the protocol’s evolution lives and dies with governance participation. Node Operators, as one of the main entities involved in the protocol’s operations, should be actively participating in DAO voting to move the protocol forward. To drive innovatives ideas and product development forward, and to act as a check & balance on initiatives they disagree with.
A large portion of the DAO treasury is held in LDO tokens, something that is not readily accessible for funding operations or investments in protocol development.
The DAO has funded unparalleled spend on decentralization initiatives such as the Community Staking Module, Dual Governance, and now is in the process of significant investments to re-work the accounting structure of the protocol to support MAXEB (a significant update), simply to benefit the Ethereum network. These are initiatives that are deeply important for the network and the protocol itself, however don’t directly lead to any significant financial benefits for the DAO, and are immensely costly.
In addition, Lido’s share of the network stake is actually 23.54% - not 29%. This is a material difference, with stakers generally turning to much more centralized alternatives such as restaking protocols, centralized exchanges, or large business-driven node operators in recent months.
As noted in the August Tokenholder update, the substantial and consistent expenses on protocol improvement and decentralization have led the DAO to not yet have a positive year in terms of income (but is getting close). Improving the financial profile of the DAO via both specific cost reductions and revenue growth is imperative for the longevity of the protocol, and will allow the DAO to invest in growth initiatives while continuing to support the decentralization of the Ethereum validator set.
Regarding your comments around Node Operator sustainability:
I believe that the current fee structure proposed is sustainable for Lido Node Operators. At current ETH/USD prices (~ $3500), and the median level of stake across the curated operators, NOs would receive ~ $812,000 of annual revenue from the Curated Module. After discussions with most of the Node Operators since the original proposal was shared, none of them have indicated that they would withdraw from the Lido Node Operator set due to this change.
Since RockLogic’s onboarding to the beginning of October 2025 (along with other Wave 4 Node Operators), RockLogic has received 1,121 stETH in rewards. The average ETH/USD exchange rate during this time equals rewards of ~ $2.69M.
I think this is an unfair characterization. Following the forum post, a Q&A townhall was held for all members of the Lido Curated Set (which you joined). In addition, a public presentation was given on the last Lido Poolside Community Call. Additionally, all Curated Node Operators have been invited to set up a call with Lido DAO contributors to discuss both CMv1 & CMv2 changes, a booking link was sent to your specific Node Operator chat, and the majority of other Curated Node Operators have already had such discussions over the last weeks.
The Contributor Thoughts on the Future of Lido Core proposal was posted on September 2nd 2025 where it suggested that most Node Operators in the Curated Set should fall into the Standard Tier, along with notice this would be suggested for implementation by December 2025.
In terms of an overall response to the post, I understand that the changes are significant. However, given the current market environment, I believe that it is important that the DAO take actions that allow it to continue to adapt.
I would argue this change is overdue, given market trends and the fact that Node Operators are charging other stakers significantly lower fees in many cases.
Regardless, I am optimistic that with developments on the institutional front, the stVaults launch, and other innovative products in the future, there are many different opportunities for Node Operators to grow their businesses alongside Lido. 2025 was a bad year for protocol inflows, and if we see that trend reverse in 2026 following the aforementioned initiatives, that will lead to greater amounts of staking inflows for Curated Node Operators.
Additionally, this proposal includes additional funding for 7 Client Teams that provide valuable services to the entire Ethereum ecosystem. This is meaningful spending as a share of fees, and continuing to support the efforts of builders like these is very much aligned with the intention of the proposal.
I think being a Node Operator in the Curated Set has been a very positive experience for everyone involved to date. It has driven large amounts of stake at above market fees to Node Operators for the last five years. My hope is that the future will better align Node Operators with the protocol, by contributing via inflows to Core or stVaults, as well as participating in Governance, to more materially support the infrastructure that has supported them over the past years.