#ETH# The surge in Ethereum validators raises concerns about stake centralization, and a new proposal seeks to strike a balance.

The Ethereum network recently reached an important milestone: the number of active validators has exceeded 1 million. The rapid growth of this figure, especially after the Shapella upgrade, has attracted widespread attention in the market. However, amid the excitement, there are also concerns about the potential technical challenges and centralization issues that may arise.
Data shows that there are currently over 850,000 validators relying on centralized platforms for staking. This is mainly because most ETH holders cannot meet the minimum staking requirement of 32 ETH or find it difficult to independently complete the complex staking operations. This situation may exacerbate the centralization risk of the network, especially when increased network bandwidth allows validators with a large amount of computing resources to participate more efficiently, which could lead to institutional-owned data centers suppressing individual self-hosted nodes.
To address this challenge, Ethereum has created