Pier Two, a leading institutional non-custodial staking service provider, has become the first entity globally to achieve Node Operator Risk Standard (NORS) Certification, completing the attestation that Pier Two has professional-quality best practices in place for Ethereum validator risk management.*
The Node Operator Risk Standard (NORS) is a rigorous, peer-reviewed framework designed to objectively evaluate and certify operational practices, security, and reliability in staking. Pier Two was the first company outside of the founding NORS Development Working Group to kick off its NORS attestation with a Qualified Assessor, and today is the first NORS certified node operator globally.
Ensuring protocol level resilience as capital markets migrate to Ethereum
As demand grows for ETH staking integrations into ETFs and managed portfolios, NORS is poised to play a central role as a security framework, allowing funds to participate in staking while remaining fully auditable and regulator-aligned. The NORS certification can be used as a filtering mechanism, ensuring that only the highest quality node operators meet the bar, securing and strengthening the operational integrity of Ethereum validator infrastructure.
At a more fundamental level, as capital market infrastructure moves on chain, the NORS standard offers governments and regulators an objective benchmark for assessment of node operators that support the operation of the Ethereum network.
For staking to scale in capital markets, performance and verifiability must go hand in hand. The open NORS risk and control framework can help regulators assess whether the Ethereum network is supported by node operators that maintain appropriate technical, operational, and governance controls to avoid the endemic market risk of protocol failure. The NORS controls help to prevent protocol risk arising from validator failures, network concentration, or client level vulnerabilities.
NORS Certification: Raising the industry bar
The Node Operator Risk Standard (NORS) is emerging as the standard for institutional validator due diligence. Developed through collaboration between insurance experts, auditors, and staking professionals, NORS rigorously assesses an operator’s maturity across domains such as key management, slashing protection, incident response, uptime performance, and decentralization.
Achieving NORS certification confirms Pier Two's commitment and adherence to standardized risk management practices. The security and reliability within the NORS framework controls are pivotal to engendering trust and provide a measurable baseline of risk management practices for node operators in the Ethereum ecosystem.
The NORS certification will serve as demonstrable evidence that Pier Two’s practices have been stress tested for operational resilience whilst affirming its ability to manage institutional scale staking requirements, underpinned by appropriate risk management practices.
*Footnote:
As noted in NORS documentation, Pier Two achieved initial NORS certification by submitting a "point-in-time" report, which assesses whether the controls implemented by the organization have been suitably designed to achieve the NORS control objectives.
For subsequent NORS recertifications, a report covering an "operating" period, which assesses whether the controls implemented by the organization have been operating effectively over a given period, is required.
In both cases, a NORS certification or recertification is valid for 12 months.