This story was featured in Episode 527.

Obol Network introduced the Obol Contributions Program, a program that offers stakers recognition for their role in decentralizing Ethereum by staking on Obol distributed validators (DVs). Obol is also offering its stakers access to future governance rights within the Obol Collective. Users can stake by depositing into third-party vaults from partners like Stakely, Mellow Protocol, or Chorus One, or by deploying a DV directly via Obol’s DV Launchpad. In May 2024, Obol introduced the 1% for Decentralization (1forDS) retroactive fund, which allocates 1% of staking rewards from Obol’s DV clusters into a funding pool aimed at supporting decentralization. Obol’s distributed validators improve Ethereum’s fault tolerance by distributing a validator's key across multiple nodes.

This story was featured in Episode 500.

Obol launched the Obol Collective, a consortium of over 50 entities dedicated to the development and adoption of distributed validators (DVs). The participants include staking protocols, client teams, software tools, community projects, and solo node operators. EtherFi and Lido have committed $1.5 billion of stake to be managed by DVs. The Obol Collective will initially oversee Obol’s 1% for Decentralization (1forDS) retroactive fund, which allocates 1% of staking rewards from DVs to projects that enhance Ethereum's decentralization. Obol intends to gradually decentralize the governance of the fund. Distributed validators enhance Ethereum's fault tolerance by mitigating risks associated with client bugs.

This story was featured in Episode 498.

Obol Network released Charon v1.0, the first long-term support (LTS) version of its distributed validator (DV) middleware client for Ethereum. The release supports distributed key generation, creating only partial validator key shares for each node in a DV cluster, without ever revealing a full private key. DVs enhance Ethereum’s fault tolerance by preventing a single point of failure. The client also prevents access to validator private key shares during runtime, minimizing the risk of private key leakage. Charon is also compatible with various client combinations. Lido and EtherFi have committed to integrating Charon into their staking operations. Obol plans to release 1.0 versions of its DV Launchpad, Obol Splits, and Obol SDK.