Optimum, a networking startup led by Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Muriel Médard, said its block propagation software mump2p has officially gone live on the Ethereum mainnet.
ether.fi now requires mump2p across all 12 node operators
Ethereum liquid staking protocol ether.fi has made mump2p mandatory for all 12 of its node operators. The software had previously been available to those operators as an optional deployment.
Optimum said 16 node operators are currently running mump2p in production. Together, they manage about 22,000 validator keys and more than 1.4 million staked ETH, accounting for over 3% of all ETH staked on Ethereum.
The companies named as partners include Blockdaemon, Everstake, P2P.org, Stakefish, and Bitcoin Suisse.
How the software works and the performance figures Optimum disclosed
According to Optimum, mump2p runs as a sidecar gateway. It does not replace Ethereum’s default GossipSub protocol. Instead, it sits on top of libp2p and uses random linear network coding.
Optimum said block arrival is 2.42 times faster than with GossipSub, while arrival-time variance is reduced by about 7.88 times.
Comments from ether.fi and Médard
Rok Kopp, co-founder and chief growth officer at ether.fi, said the company would not require its full validator set to adopt a new piece of infrastructure unless it was confident that the change would improve outcomes for both stakers and the network.
Médard said traditional financial institutions spend tens of billions of dollars to cut execution times by milliseconds because speed is money.
Testnet, funding, and expansion plans
Optimum launched a private testnet in June 2025. Before that, the company completed an $11 million seed round led by 1kx. It also plans to expand the protocol to other high-throughput blockchains after Ethereum.