The Importance of Trustless Validators

Ethereum's merge and transition to a proof-of-stake consensus implied switching from proof-of-work mining to transactions being validated by entities that have an economic stake in the network. Proof-of-stake distributed networks are subject to complex game theory models (e.g. slashing). Distributed validator technology (DVT) enables a more modular validator stack at every level: key pairs, hardware and entities. This reduces trust dependencies and increases security for validator entities.

We were joined by Collin Myers & Oisín Kyne, founders of Obol Network, to discuss Ethereum's 2.0 PoS consensus, the current validator landscape and how distributed validator technology (DVT) allows for an increased security and overall smoother UX for validator entities.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Collin’s & Oisín’s backgrounds
• Distributed Validator Technology (DVT) explained
• How DVT improves user experience for different staking models
• Reducing validator costs and increasing fault tolerance through DVT
• Obol middleware approach
• Obol v.2
• Interacting with other middleware from the Ethereum stack
• Expanding DVT to other ecosystems
• Future validator landscape
• How post-Danksharding data availability will be handled by an Obol cluster
• L2 Ethereum equivalence

Episode links:

• Collin Myers on Twitter
• Oisín Kyne on Twitter
• Obol Network on Twitter

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/497