Ethereum Validator Participation Dropped 25% After Prysm Client Bug, Nearly Lost Finality
Ethereum's validator participation rate fell to 74.7% at Epoch 411,448 following the Fusaka network upgrade, Beaconcha.in data show. Prysm announced Thursday its v7.0.0 consensus client unnecessarily generated old states when processing outdated attestations, causing node failures, and recommended users temporarily launch with the "--disable-last-epoch-targets" flag. The 25% drop left the network less than 9 percentage points above the 66.6% supermajority threshold required to maintain finality. As of Epoch 411,712, voting participation has recovered to nearly 99%, with sync participation at 97%, while MigaLabs data show Lighthouse now accounts for 52.55% of consensus nodes and Prysm 18%.