How OBOL rates staking providers
Staking looks like a yield product and behaves like an infrastructure contract. Two operators quoting the same headline rate can deliver returns a full percentage point apart once uptime, missed attestations and commission are accounted for — so performance carries the heaviest weight in this rubric, measured against network averages rather than the provider's own marketing.
Slashing history sits second. Slashing is rare, and that is precisely the problem: it makes correlated failure easy to ignore. We look at whether an operator has been slashed, whether it ran client software that could fail in step with the rest of the network, and whether it reimbursed clients when things went wrong.
Custody is the question most people forget to ask
Delegated staking on Cosmos-style chains never moves your coins. Ethereum staking through a provider usually does move the withdrawal credentials, or at least the validator keys. Those are entirely different risks, and we say which applies in every review.
Concentration is a network problem and your problem
An operator running a large share of a network's stake is a systemic risk to that chain and a correlated risk to you. We reward genuine client and infrastructure diversity, and mark down providers who treat decentralisation as a marketing page rather than an operating constraint.