Ethereum Foundation stakes 2,016 ETH at the start of large-scale state deployment

By staking treasury ETH, the Ethereum Foundation now directly participates in the consensus while generating natural ether-denominated returns.

The Ethereum Foundation has announced that it has begun deploying some of its treasury funds, following the Treasury Policy it released last year.

The latest move represents a formal step toward directly participating in Ethereum’s proof-of-stake consensus.

Treasury stake

As part of this initiative, the Foundation deposited 2,016 ETH on Tuesday and stated that it plans to stake a total of approximately 70,000 ETH, with all stake rewards returning to the Foundation’s coffers. The staking setup relies entirely on open source infrastructure, and the Foundation selected Dirk as a distributed signing solution and Vouch to manage validator operations across multiple Beacon and Execution Client links.

According to the announcement, Dirk will distribute signing responsibilities across different geographic regions to eliminate single points of failure, while Vouch will enable configurable strategies designed to mitigate customer diversity risks. The overall configuration utilizes a mix of minority customers, in addition to both hosted infrastructure and self-managed hardware deployed across multiple jurisdictions.

The Foundation also confirmed that its validators are using Type 2 (0x02) withdrawal credentials, which allows validator balances to be transferred through consolidations, reduces the number of signature keys required by supporting a higher maximum effective balance per validator, and enables flexible exits that can be triggered by the withdrawal address even when validators are offline.

This approach simplifies key management and supports faster changes in key custody, the Swiss non-profit organization said.

As for block production, the rig is built locally rather than relying on separation sidecars from the submitter and the builder. The Foundation stated that by solo staking its own ETH, it will generate native ETH-denominated yield using Ethereum’s protocol mechanisms.

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Short-term weakness predominates

On the price front, ETH traded sharply lower over the past 24 hours, extending the short-term downtrend as sellers remained in control throughout the session. The price fell from around $1,920 during early Asian trading hours on Tuesday to almost $1,820 as brief attempts to stabilize failed to gain traction. While price action remains under pressure in the short term, some analysts believe the broader setup looks more constructive over a longer time horizon.

Analyst Merlijn The Trader said ETH is in a five-year demand zone that has historically favored accumulation, not distribution. He noted that prices have returned to the levels of earlier phases of the bear market and momentum may be quietly building despite the slow pace.