Vitalik is truly building privacy infrastructure this time. STARK aggregation compresses the validator state to 6 bytes, even daring to delete public keys. Millions of nodes can still run. The era of anonymous staking is coming.

Buterin proposed in the Lean upgrade concept to simplify beacon chain state and enhance validator privacy through STARK aggregation: remove public keys, use STARK proofs for daily balance updates, compress each validator's state into 1 byte for balance and 5 bytes for a public key index, and reduce epoch tail processing. This design can support millions of validators. Future versions will introduce daily re-anonymization, hidden withdrawal address commitments, etc., breaking the public link between deposits, staking, and withdrawals. The balance update period floor is about 1 hour, conservatively around 1 day.