Kleros founder Clément Lesaege has proposed a protocol-level mechanism that would let Ethereum validators redirect part of their staking rewards to ecosystem funding, framing chronic underfunding as a coordination failure the protocol itself can fix. Lesaege published the proposal on ethresear.ch on June 21, 2026.
The proposal starts from a free-rider problem. Shared infrastructure benefits everyone, but no single actor wants to pay when others can free-ride, leaving collectively valuable work underfunded and dependent on the Ethereum Foundation or philanthropists. Validators are presented as the natural funders because their rewards are denominated in ETH, so a healthier ecosystem raises network value and the value of their staked principal.
The design adds two protocol-level signals. Validators set a percentage of staking rewards to redirect, and if a majority signal a rate above zero, the contribution becomes mandatory for all validators, capped at a maximum of 10% of staking rewards. They also set preferred recipient addresses, which execution clients aggregate into a splitter contract through a "king of the hill" mechanism that converges on the distribution most aligned with validator preferences. At current staking levels, a 10% redirect would route on the order of 70,000 ETH per year to the ecosystem, with validators always able to dial the rate back to 0%.
The proposal has already drawn opposition. Trent van Epps, an organizer at the core-dev funding organization Protocol Guild, said he welcomes exploring the design space but called some of the proposal's tradeoffs disqualifying. Lefteris Karapetsas said he opposes it outright, citing a decade of core development out of touch with the protocol's actual developer users and warning the mechanism could let a cartel of the largest stakers capture up to 10% of network rewards. Gnosis contributor mrtdlgc.eth argued the proposal wrongly frames validators as defectors when they already provide core value by securing the network.
Lesaege frames the post as a deliberate "wrong answer" meant to spur debate over protocol-level funding rather than a finished design, and plans a follow-up FAQ before drafting a formal Ethereum Improvement Proposal. The proposal lands amid an active debate over Ethereum's core development funding.
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