Bitcoin Suisse Moves Its Ethereum Staking to Obol Distributed Validators

A year ago, Bitcoin Suisse deployed its first Obol Distributed Validators on Ethereum mainnet. Today, that pilot has evolved into its new operating standard.

Bitcoin Suisse is in the process of migrating its Ethereum staking infrastructure to Obol Distributed Validators, with all Ethereum validators expected to transition from traditional single-validator architectures to Obol Distributed Validators over the coming months.

For one of the largest and longest-established institutional staking operators globally, this marks a strategic step toward future-proofing its enterprise-grade Ethereum staking infrastructure.

A Market Leader since the Beginning of Ethereum Staking

Bitcoin Suisse has been active in the institutional crypto industry since its early stage and one of the oldest and largest crypto financial service providers, established in Switzerland in 2013.Bitcoin Suisse facilitated the original Ethereum Foundation crowd sale in 2014, introduced a Swiss-Franc-backed stablecoin (XCHF) in 2018, launched one of the world's first Ethereum staking services during the beacon chain launch in 2020, and brought enterprise-grade liquid staking to the Swiss market via Liquid Collective in 2023. This migration to Obol Distributed Validators represents the next evolution of Bitcoin Suisse's staking infrastructure and reflects the firm's view of where institutional Ethereum staking is heading.

The Outcome of Substantial Testing and Due Diligence

Bitcoin Suisse has been running Obol DVs since 2024. The firm tested the architecture under live mainnet conditions, across multiple cluster topologies, through routine maintenance, hardware faults, and client-specific bugs. Insights from that period will now shape their entire Ethereum staking setup:

"After running Obol DVs in production for the past year, Bitcoin Suisse‘s experience has been compelling. Distributed Validators have demonstrated strong resilience and performance characteristics and offer an attractive risk-adjusted approach to Ethereum staking. They are intended to be the foundation for every Ethereum validator we will operate on behalf of our clients going forward. Migrating our staking technology to Obol is the logical outcome of what our data and security reviews are telling us." says Yves Holenstein, Head of Custody and Staking, Bitcoin Suisse

The migration is comprehensive. It will span Bitcoin Suisse's full range of institutional Ethereum staking services:

In each case, the underlying stake will be run on Obol Distributed Validators.

Why Distributed Validators, And Why Now

Legacy validator setups can involve an asymmetric risk profile that many institutional stakeholders increasingly seek to reduce. They concentrate dependency on a single node, a single private key, and often create geographic centralization risks. When those risks are exposed, clients may experience reduced rewards, while providers can face reputational and economic consequences.

Obol Distributed Validators eliminate that single point of failure at the architectural level. Each validator runs as a cluster of independent nodes, coordinated by Charon clients, Obol's Distributed Validator middleware. A super majority of nodes must agree before any signature is produced, which means a cluster keeps proposing and attesting even when individual nodes or operators go offline. This is active-active redundancy rather than traditional failover architectures which have caused most slashing events to date.

In a distributed validator, a Distributed Key Generation (DKG) ceremony creates partial private key shares across the cluster operators. No single participant controls the complete validator private key, which is never stored on the validator node, loaded into its memory, or managed by a single operator. This architecture significantly reduces risks associated with insider threats, API compromise, credential theft, and certain operational security incidents.

For Bitcoin Suisse, Obol DVs represent a further development of its custody and staking setup. The firm's existing internal controls and protections were already strong, but now their validator technology will benefit from an additional layer of operational resilience.

A New Floor for Institutional Staking

"Bitcoin Suisse moving its Ethereum staking fleet to Obol Distributed Validators reflects a leading approach to institutional Ethereum staking. Institutions are increasingly applying the same security principles to staking infrastructure that they apply to digital asset custody. Distributed Validators represent one of the most advanced validator architectures available today, and Bitcoin Suisse is demonstrating what that architecture can look like at Enterprise scale." says Oisin Kyne, Co-Founder & CEO, DV Labs

Bitcoin Suisse and Obol are committing to a long-term technical relationship and continued integration within Obol's institutional, including Cluster as a Service (CaaS) and the broader operator ecosystem that Obol coordinates.

For Bitcoin Suisse's clients, the upgrade is invisible by design. The service they trust continues uninterrupted. What changes is what sits underneath it: validator technology built to strengthen security and support consistent staking performance.

About Obol 

Obol powers and secures the multi-trillion dollar Ethereum economy. Building a future where the majority of validators will run as Distributed Validators, an advanced approach to resilient Ethereum staking infrastructure, and the Ethereum agent economy, which will be powered by the Obol Stack. Together, they form the secure foundation and decentralized engine for Ethereum’s role as the world’s credibly neutral settlement layer.

About Bitcoin Suisse

Bitcoin Suisse AG is a leading premium crypto financial services provider. Founded in 2013 by crypto-native experts, it provides a cohesive suite of trading, custody, staking and lending services for institutional clients, crypto foundations, family offices, asset managers and high-net-worth individuals. Bitcoin Suisse is headquartered in Zug with over 200 employees in Switzerland, Liechtenstein, the United Arab Emirates, and Bermuda. www.bitcoinsuisse.com