Ethereum developers have drafted a flexible staking deposit path that could eventually accommodate future validator key formats, including quantum-resistant options, while permanently halting new deposits using the current BLS format.
The draft proposal, introduced as pull request #12235, aims to modify how new validators enter the Ethereum network. The current staking deposit contract relies on fixed BLS12-381 formats for public keys and signatures. The new specification introduces a scheme identifier along with variable-length fields for public keys and credential metadata, capped at 8,192 bytes each.
Under the proposed mechanism, the execution layer would be capable of recording a deposit while the consensus layer would determine if the credential is valid to create or update a validator. The contract would carry non-BLS credentials as opaque data, meaning it would transport the bytes without directly verifying the new cryptography.
The draft outlines three contract modes: disabled, BLS enabled, and BLS retired. These transitions move strictly forward. Once a protocol-controlled system call activates the retired mode, the contract would reject BLS deposits and cannot switch BLS onboarding back on. Deposits that entered the pending queue prior to the retirement boundary would still remain eligible for processing under the existing consensus framework.
As an unmerged draft, the proposal still requires separate protocol work to address key issues such as signature validation, validator state representation, top-ups, duplicate handling, uniqueness, and key replacement. Activating the new deposit path would also require a coordinated execution- and consensus-layer fork, alongside separate upgrades to define and adopt future validation rules.
