TL;DR

In this note, we explore the market of staking providers. We analyze how they work, what their pricing models look like, and make some comments on their viability for white labeling.

Introduction

Staking on Ethereum can be achieved in several ways: running one's own infrastructure, choosing an exchange, joining a staking pool, or staking through a professional operator.

For the purposes of understanding white labeling, we are interested in the last option. The procedure for staking with an operator can take place in one of the following ways:

1. The operator (or a smart contract controlled by the operator) directly receives the user’s ETH and withdrawal credentials, starts the validator, and runs it on behalf of the user.
2. The operator can also migrate validators to their own infrastructure—that is, receive existing validator keys and continue to run them.

White-labeling in the case of Lido

Let $O$ represent a Lido operator who is enrolled in the NodeOperatorsRegistry (or its equivalent, in the case of a different staking module), and $W$ denotes a white-label operator. In this context, $O$ is the prospective user of a staking service that is provided by $W$.

When analyzing the potential of white-label nodes in Lido, we are not concerned with the first approach to staking described above, since the 32 ETH required to start a new validator are never directly in control of $O$. However, migrations of validator keys are of concern. Moreover, if a staking service offers this option publicly without requiring any coordination with $O$, then the process of white-labeling becomes seamless for permissionless Lido operators. The question then becomes whether $O$ can still make a profit after paying for $W$’s service fees.

In cases of more coordination between $O$ and $W$, they could privately negotiate the migration process, or $W$ could simply give fresh public validator keys for $O$ to place in the NodeOperatorsRegistry.

Staking providers overview

Due to the points above, we are interested in assessing the fees charged by staking providers, as well as whether they offer migration of validators as a public service. We also indicate which of these staking providers are Lido node operators as of August 2023. A summary table can be found below.

Note that these are retail costs. These numbers do not account for the possibility of discounts or bargainin in the case of very large orders.

More data on these staking providers can be found here:

Staking Services Provider List Comparison | Staking Rewards

Observations

Some comments from our data collection: