Critical alarm raised by Ethereum community member highlights the necessity of integrating EIP-7251 ('maxeb') into the upcoming Pectra hard fork to prevent catastrophic failure.
During a recent address to the Ethereum community, Ryan Berckmans, an experienced figure in the Ethereum ecosystem as an investor, member, and engineer, has sounded an urgent warning regarding potential catastrophic repercussions within the Ethereum network if the forthcoming Pectra hard fork proceeds without the integration of Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) 7251, commonly referred to as “maxeb.” This proposal aims to tackle a critical vulnerability in the network's capacity to manage a growing number of staked ETH by facilitating greater consolidation of validators.
Ethereum Facing a Dire Scenario
Berckmans utilized X (formerly known as Twitter) to express his apprehensions, stating, “Ethereum’s next hard fork, Pectra, should incorporate EIP-7251 (“maxeb”)… Without maxeb in Pectra, Ethereum lacks a viable defense against the risk of staked ETH % reaching ~50%+ prior to a subsequent hard fork around ~2026 after Pectra.” He highlights the severity of the situation, stating, “Without maxeb, the worst-case scenario for Ethereum is potentially catastrophic.”
EIP-7251 proposes an increase in the maximum effective balance for validators from the current limit of 32 ETH to an unrestricted amount. This adjustment aims to mitigate risks associated with a fragmented validator pool, which could jeopardize the stability of the beacon chain.
The necessity for such a measure is emphasized by Berckmans’ explanation of the network’s technical challenges: “Experts at the base layer caution that if staked ETH surpasses ~50%+, it could lead to severe-to-fatal instability in the beacon chain. The infrastructure wasn’t designed to accommodate such a high number of validators.”
Berckmans further delves into the technical impracticality of modifying the beacon chain within the timeframe of the Pectra hard fork to support a higher percentage of staked ETH, stating, “I've been informed that adapting the beacon chain to naturally accommodate 50%+ staked ETH for Pectra is entirely unfeasible. A longer-term solution is still in the research phase.”
Significance of “Maxeb”
The proposal doesn’t serve as a temporary fix but rather as a strategic enhancement to reduce the number of validators without compromising the network’s decentralized principles or altering its monetary policies. Berckmans emphasizes, “Thankfully, EIP-7251 maxeb is essentially prepared and achieves the objective of reducing the # of validators without altering monetary policy or issuance.”
He also addresses concerns that EIP-7251 might disproportionately benefit large staking operators or alter the network’s reward structure: “Maxeb doesn’t alter issuance or staking rewards… It’s not a shift in monetary policy… Maxeb doesn’t facilitate the ‘rich getting richer’.”
Moreover, Berckmans highlights the operational advantages of maxeb, especially for staking operators who currently manage multiple validators: “The incentive to consolidate off-chain is facilitated by (i) maxeb automatically and passively reinvesting staking rewards, eliminating the need for new transactions to stake every 32 ETH of rewards, and (ii) maxeb reducing devops costs and complexity for staking operators by enabling them to run one validator instead of dozens or tens of thousands of validators.”
Berckmans concludes with a call to action, emphasizing the critical nature of this decision for Ethereum’s future: “If we exclude maxeb from Pectra, we might confront a potentially disastrous scenario where we must choose between the beacon chain collapsing (Ethereum failure) or implementing an emergency alteration to monetary policy (significantly reducing staking rewards) to decrease the number of validators. Let’s safeguard Ethereum by including maxeb in Pectra.”
Clash Between BTC And ETH Communities
Despite the technical rationale behind EIP-7251, the proposal has sparked critical reactions from the broader crypto community, particularly among Bitcoin supporters. Checkmatey, Glassnode’s Lead On-chain Analyst, offered a critical perspective, commenting,
People still ponder why ETH isn’t regarded at the same institutional-grade, high-resiliency status as BTC. This might partly be due to ‘catastrophic failure’ scenarios not being taken into account, […] It’s quite concerning when a proof-of-stake network is structured in a way that it becomes unstable when **checks notes** too many people stake…?
As of the latest update, ETH is trading at $3,770.
