Last updated on March 8th, 2026 at 03:13 pm
Copenhagen-based Northstake has integrated Australian infrastructure provider Pier Two into its Staking Vault Manager (SVM), a move designed to broaden the pool of professional-grade node operators available for institutional Ethereum staking.
The addition allows regulated asset managers and custodians to leverage Pier Two’s validators within the modular stVault framework, which was recently introduced as part of the Lido V3 upgrade to enable tailored, non-custodial staking configurations.
Exciting news! 📰📢@PierTwo_com joins Northstake’s Staking Vault Manager strengthening the institutional validator set behind stVault-based Ethereum staking 👇 pic.twitter.com/QGL7pOrSKm
— Northstake (@Northstake_dk) February 18, 2026
Institutional Validator Diversity Enhancement
The move satisfies the rising need among institutional allocators for geographic and operational diversity in their validator pools. Northstake CEO Jesper Johansen observed that institutional mandates are increasingly centred on operational discipline and transparency, and Pier Two is one of the only providers in the world to possess the Node Operator Risk Standard (NORS) certification, making it a valuable addition to the SVM ecosystem.
With the addition of Pier Two, Northstake offers its institutional clients access to a validator operator that oversees around $6 billion in delegated assets and boasts a zero-slashing history. The SVM serves as a multi-operator orchestration layer, enabling institutions to stake their validators across tier-1 operators while maintaining possession of their private keys and settings via Lido’s stVault primitives.
Shift in Ethereum Staking
This new addition comes on the heels of Northstake’s recent inclusion of P2P.org into the same framework, indicating a rapid growth of its institutional validator marketplace. This trend towards more modular infrastructure, such as stVaults, represents a profound shift from the homogeneous staking offerings of the past years, allowing for tailored risk-reward tradeoffs and customized reporting structures.
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