Maximum Effective Balance Overview

When the Electra (pectra) upgrade becomes active on Ethereum Mainnet, validators on the consensus layer will be able to have a higher maximum effective balance than they are allowed in Deneb (dencun).

There is a new type of validator with a withdrawal prefix of 0x02; known as a compounding validator; and this validators' effective balance will be able to go as high as 2048 ETH. Existing Deneb and prior validators will continue to retain their 32 ETH maximum effective balance. Further explanation can be found here.

Because the effective balance of these entities is allowed to go beyond 32 ETH, they will

• be more likely to propose a block
• be more likely to be in a sync committee
• earn greater rewards as they perform duties.

Until Electra, the effective balance of a validator was basically limited to 32 ETH, which was also the activation balance for a validator. Please see validator duties for more information if you are interested.

At Electra, the activation balance remains at 32.0ETH for all validator types.

As part of this change, the initial slashing penalty also got altered so that its a very small relative value to the balance. This affects all validators by reducing that initial fine that slashed validators are given, from 1/32 your balance (Deneb) down to 1/4096 of your balance in electra.

Facilities have been added to allow

• Updating the type of a validator from execution to compounding
• Consolidation of validators into larger compounding validators
• Partial Withdrawals from compounding validators
• Top-ups of existing validator balances