Lido Engineer Warns of Staking Deposit Hijack Risk at Glamsterdam Fork
Lido Head of Engineering Dima Gusakov warns that shared deposit queues around the Glamsterdam fork could let a malicious node operator hijack staker ETH. A consensus-specs fix was closed as 'not planned', leaving pre-deposit checks to staking protocols.
A malicious node operator could redirect staker ETH during Ethereum's transition to the Glamsterdam hard fork, Dima Gusakov, Head of Engineering at Lido Finance, warned on October 20, 2026. The front-running risk he flagged targets delegated staking protocols.
Glamsterdam introduces builder deposits, which use withdrawal credentials marked with the 0xB0 prefix. According to Gusakov's warning, builder deposits and validator deposits will run through shared deposit queues around the fork.
That overlap creates the opening. A malicious node operator with the right access could submit a builder deposit that preemptively claims ETH meant for a staker's validator. If the attack succeeds, the deposit is credited to the attacker's builder account, and the validator the staker was funding never activates.
The vulnerability is specific to the pre-fork phase. It is not described as a permanent flaw in Ethereum's design.
Issue closed as "not planned"
The problem was raised in the Ethereum consensus-specs GitHub repository as issue #5735, which proposed pre-deposit checks. Core developers closed it as "not planned."
Gusakov's response points to those same pre-deposit checks as the defense. That shifts the burden to staking protocols rather than the core specification.
Fork timeline
Glamsterdam combines Gloas, the consensus-layer upgrade, with Amsterdam, the execution-layer upgrade. It is scheduled to activate on the Hoodi testnet on October 26, 2026. No mainnet date is set, though launch is targeted for Q4 2026.
Existing safeguards
Lido built a Deposit Security Module and a guardian committee after deposit front-running vulnerabilities came to light in 2021. The guardians check deposits for anything suspicious slipped in ahead of them. Whether that system, and equivalents at other providers, account for 0xB0 credentials and shared queues at the fork boundary is an open question.
Providers with robust pre-deposit verification, such as Lido's guardian model, appear better positioned. Smaller or newer services without comparable checks may need to move quickly.
Context
The warning comes as Lido adds products. The protocol recently launched one-transaction ETH staking on Arbitrum, Base, Linea, and Optimism, and is planning a Q4 2026 launch of Lido Lend.
