Improving Ethereum Resilience and Security: Figment Tests Obol DVT - Figment

Improving Ethereum Resilience and Security: Figment Tests Obol DVT

Benjamin Thalman

Staff Protocol Analyst & ETH PM

Published

November 7, 2023

Figment has completed our large scale performance testing of Obol’s Distributed Validator Technology (DVT). Figment was one of five staking service providers involved in these large scale tests, which included:

• Running various infrastructure including Distributed Validator (DV) clusters of various sizes.
• Engaging in logging and monitoring of performance.
• Holding regular meetings with the Obol team to discuss progress, share observations and any pain points.
• Collaborating on a final report summarizing the large scale performance testing efforts.

For more see “Mainnet Alpha DVs & Large Scale Performance Testing” and “ Performance Testing Distributed Validators”.

What is Distributed Validator Technology?

DVT seeks to build in active/active redundancy to the validation process on Ethereum. It does this by replacing a single validator with a group of validators – this group is referred to as a DV cluster.

Using a multi engine aircraft as an analogy – if the aircraft loses one of its engines it’s able to continue flying. Likewise, DV clusters are able to remain 100% performant despite some validators in the cluster potentially failing. DVT has the ability to increase the performance of Ethereum beyond the performance of the average validator on the network. This creates an assumption about the correlation of the participation rate of validators – the assumption is that there is low correlation (i.e., a non-perfect correlation). Any correlation less than 1 has the potential to increase performance of the network.

Why is DVT important?

DVT brings at least three major benefits to Ethereum:

• It improves resilience – up to ⅓ of validators in a DV cluster can fail and the cluster will still perform and receive full rewards. In other words, it’s possible in the most extreme case, that DVT turns a baseline participation rate of 67% into 100%.
• It improves key security – validator keys never exist in entirety in any one place, making compromised validator keys much less likely.
• It lowers the barrier to entry, encouraging decentralization. Groups of operators can pool their ETH together to reach the 32 ETH threshold, which potentially makes running a validator more accessible.

When will Obol be Released?

Obol is being released in stages and currently we are in the Alpha phase which means a partial integration of Obol into the Ethereum ecosystem.

In the coming quarters there are further tests and broader deployment planned:

• Alpha Launch – September 13th – measured roll out of Obol DVs on Ethereum Mainnet with select Alpha partners ( https://twitter.com/ObolNetwork/status/1701928477082214727)
• Beta launch – wider measured deployment of Obol DVs on Ethereum Mainnet
• Obol V1 – full public deployment of Obol DVs on Ethereum Mainnet
• Obol V2 – following the launch of Obol V1 (steps above), V2 will focus on furthering trust minimization and establishing a multi client implementation of an Obol DV protocol, for more see here

To learn more about Obol and DVT see Obol’s documentation and an article from Figment on DVT.

Figment Supporting Innovation

Figment is continually exploring and experimenting with new technologies while seeking to offer our customers the best staking service available. These efforts also help to strengthen the networks we operate on. Exploring technologies like DVT allows Figment to stay aware of important developments in the ecosystem, adopt the best practices and foster network resilience.

Over 250 institutional clients rely on Figment to provide best-in-class staking services including seamless and easy integrations, detailed rewards reporting, insights, MEV-Boost activation on ETH, double-sign slashing, and downtime penalty coverage. Figment’s team has extensive protocol staking knowledge intended to help dive into the specifics such as rewards and staking information. Meet with us to learn more about protocol staking.

The information herein is being provided to you for general informational purposes only. It is not intended to be, nor should it be relied upon as, legal, business, or investment advice. Figment undertakes no obligation to update the information herein.