EL triggered validator Pause

EIP 7002 (EIP-7002: Execution layer triggerable exits) introduces a mechanism for allowing withdrawal addresses to trigger exits and potentially partial withdrawals with maxEB (EIP-7251: Increase the MAX_EFFECTIVE_BALANCE)

Another important thing for staking UX could be an ability to PAUSE a validator (previously discussed/raised by @MicahZoltu on github or other discussion forums). Various kind of Pause UX can be build upon:

  1. Pause validator for a specific time after which it goes active automatically
  2. Pause validator and wait for re-activation trigger again via withdrawal credentials

While 2. is more flexible, 1. seems to be better as the fees for pausing for a particular period can be estimated/charged and burned (for maintaining the validator in BeaconState) and also relatively easier to implement.

This would allow stakers to take a break in their operations (for whatever reasons) without going through exits and potentially preventing churn which can cause a bloat in state and unnecessary operational complications.

For maintaining the PoS security, the pause and (automatic or manual) resume will need to be go through activation/exit queues.

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what time frames is this targeting? feels like this is only worth if you wanna pause operations for multiple weeks / months

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yes ideal timeframe is weeks but we can allow whatever timeframe a staker wants to choose as long as he is willing to pay Beacon Chain timeframe based appropriate rent (which EL will BURN as some baseFee) for keeping his/her/their validator around.

It will need to coordinate with EIP-6914 to distinguish between withdrawn validator and paused validator, which both are seen as inactive in the current protocol.

I like 2. Resume/pause will be very similar to the Activate/withdraw mechanism.

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yes thats correct, 6914 would have to ignore these indices for reallocation.