The debate over Solo Staking vs Pool Staking has been ongoing in the Ethereum community. The primary technical difference between the two lies in operational control, with solo stakers responsible for setting up and maintaining their own node, while pool stakers delegate this task to a third-party or decentralized network.
Solo staking requires a minimum of 32 ETH to activate a validator, whereas pool staking allows users to participate with fractions of an ETH. This makes pool staking more accessible and democratic in terms of yield generation.
Pool stakers also issue Liquid Staking Tokens (LSTs) like stETH or rETH, which unlock liquidity for DeFi composability. In contrast, solo-staked ETH is locked on the beacon chain until a manual exit.