Validator taxes are here—5% to 10% of staking rewards will be taken to set up an ecological fund. Is this meant to address free-riding, or is it essentially a disguised tax?

Ethereum proposes a new plan: validators will redirect a portion of staking rewards at a rate of 0%–10% to fund the ecosystem, and if the majority of validators agree on a non-zero percentage, it will be enforced. The goal is to address the free-rider problem—multiple parties sharing infrastructure and security costs but no one willing to bear them alone. Currently, staking rewards amount to about 700k ETH per year; if redirected at 5%–10%, ecosystem funding could increase by approximately 50k–70k ETH, equivalent to about $120 million. However, this move could spark controversy and carries the risk of validator cartelization.