Guides

Consolidate validators into a stVault

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Draft: this tutorial is a working draft pending product validation. Button labels, screen order, and validation messages below are reconstructed from the consolidation UI and API and may differ in production. If you spot a discrepancy, please flag it to the docs maintainer.

This lesson migrates one or more external validators — ones you already run, with their own withdrawal credentials — onto a validator that lives in your stVault. It uses the EIP-7251 consolidation primitive from the Pectra fork: the source validators' balances move onto a single target, and the sources exit. No unstaking, no re-entering the activation queue, no missed yield in between.

For the underlying mechanics (credentials, the 2048 ETH cap, one request per pair), read Validator consolidations first; this is the hands-on walkthrough.

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Direction matters. Lido v3 supports consolidating from external validators into a stVault target. It does not support consolidating away from validators whose withdrawal credentials are already a stVault. Treat this as a one-way migration tool for bringing outside stake in.

What you'll build

  • One or more external validators merged onto a single target validator inside your stVault
  • The sources exited, their balance now compounding on the target

Before you start

You need:

  • A stVault with at least one active validator to act as the target (create one with Create your first validator).
  • One or more external source validators that are active and whose withdrawal credentials you control.
  • The withdrawal-address wallet of each source connected and ready to sign — this is the wallet that must originate the consolidation request. If it doesn't match, the request can be broadcast but won't take effect.
  • A target whose projected balance stays ≤ 2048 ETH once the sources are merged in.

Step 1: Open the consolidation flow

  1. From the vault page, open Consolidate.
  2. On Select vault, confirm the target vault (it's preselected if you launched from the vault row). Click Next.

Step 2: Configure the source/target pairs

On Configure Validator Pairs you map each source validator to the target it should merge into.

  1. In a pair row, paste the source validator's BLS public key (0x followed by 96 hex characters). Invalid formats are flagged inline as you type.
  2. Pick the target validator from the dropdown — it's searchable by index, name, or pubkey and lists your vault's validators.
  3. To merge several sources into the same target, click Add Pair and repeat with the same target each time. Each row is one source.
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Self-consolidation. Pointing a source at itself (same key for source and target) switches that validator to 0x02 compounding credentials without moving any balance — occasionally useful, but not what this migration lesson is about.

Click Next. Northstake runs a pre-flight validation against on-chain state: it resolves each pubkey, computes the projected target balance, and works out which wallet must sign. Format errors, unknown validators, or a target that would exceed 2048 ETH are caught here.

Step 3: Review

The Review Consolidation screen summarises what you're about to sign:

  • The vault, the number of consolidations, and the target validator(s).
  • A per-pair table of current → projected balances, so you can see the target growing.
  • The total balance being consolidated.
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Wallet mismatch. If the connected wallet isn't the withdrawal address of a source, you'll see a Wallet Mismatch Detected warning. It won't block signing, but the request "will likely not result in a consolidation" — the beacon chain only honours a request that originates from the source's own withdrawal address. Connect the correct wallet before signing.

The screen also tells you how many transactions you'll sign: one per pair.

Step 4: Sign, one transaction per pair

Click Sign transaction. The flow steps through each pair in order — Preparing transaction… → Please sign in your wallet… → Waiting for confirmation… — with a progress indicator showing transaction N of total. Sign each one in the source's withdrawal-address wallet.

When all pairs are submitted, Consolidation Complete lists each source → target with its transaction hash.

What just happened

Each signed request went to the beacon chain's consolidation predeploy. Over the following epochs the chain drains each source's balance onto the target and exits the source: the source moves active → exited → withdrawn on the standard exit timeline, and the target's effective balance updates at the next epoch boundary.

The consolidated balance now lives on the target validator inside your vault — there's no separate withdrawal to claim for it. The exited sources' principal and any pending rewards, however, sweep into the vault and are claimable through the normal flow: see Staking withdrawals.

What to do next

  • Confirm the merge. Watch the target validator's effective balance climb and the sources reach exited on the Validators tab.
  • Claim the swept source balance. Once the sources are withdrawn, recover their principal: see Staking withdrawals.
  • Understand the limits. The constraints table in Validator consolidations is the reference for what the beacon chain will and won't accept.