Development Update — 12th June, 2018
Welcome to another exciting Rocket Pool dev update! Did someone say “new modern re-brand”, “full 0.2.0 Casper integration” and a “public beta release where you can actually use Casper for the first time”? Well someone has now.
It’s been a very busy month again for the Rocket Pool team; not only have we been getting a nice new modern rebrand to be released alongside the even newer public beta due to be announced in detail soon, but we’ve also been hard at work integrating the live Casper contract into our unit tests and very own Ethereum Proof of Authority network to be used for the beta.
In other super exciting news, ConsenSys Ventures, the venture arm of the ConsenSys Ethereum blockchain powerhouse, has just very recently announced an investment into Rocket Pool as it seeks to form a relationship with the first announced Casper staking pool. ConsenSys has elaborated on the thinking behind these investments: “It’s very important for us to invest into companies that both embody the ethos of decentralization while also pushing the Ethereum ecosystem forward.”
Rocket Pool — Wait, what, who?
If you’re not familiar with Rocket Pool, here’s a quick run down before we get into the meat and potatoes of the latest development updates.
Rocket Pool is a next generation pool designed to work with Casper, the new consensus protocol that Ethereum will transition to in 2018. It was the first working implementation of a Proof of Stake pool and features several first to market features, such as load balancing across multiple cloud hosting providers using smart contracts, minipools, widow addresses and deposit tokens. Rocket Pool isn’t just a whitepaper, it’s actual code.
At the very essence of it, Rocket Pool will work to allow your everyday user and business the ability to earn interest on their ether holdings over a fixed term, whether that be for just a few months or even up to a year. Be sure to read the Rocket Pool 101 — FAQ for more information.
Beta
Rocket Pool will soon be announcing the start of its first public beta running on our own Ethereum Proof of Authority chain. Using our own testnet we will be able to deploy the very latest Casper contract to the network and give users a chance to interact with it via Rocket Pool’s beta UI. For users wishing to participate, we’ll be supplying users with testnet ether via our own faucet and also via our Discord chat room.
We plan on having multiple versions of the beta to accommodate community feedback, the v1 beta will be announced shortly after the PoA network testnet is active, followed by a v2 beta a few months later after we’ve had a chance to fine-tune the UI, monitor the progress of the smart nodes on our testnet, incorporate any new changes to Casper and build in improvements. The beta will feature shortened staking options (1 day, 2 days, 3 days), Casper on steroids with much faster epochs and very quick withdrawal periods… did you really think we’d make you wait 4 months to withdraw on our first beta?
If you want to learn more about the beta, want to participate or even see if it blows up on day one, please follow us here or join our Discord chat room for news. There will be limited spots. Stay tuned for more information soon!
Rebrand
With the launch of the upcoming beta, we’re also taking the opportunity to modernise and update our main site.
This new look Rocket Pool website will be launched at the same time as the beta starts with a much more streamlined look and feel which you can already start to get a feel for with some of the preview screenshots in this update.
Casper Integration
Casper FFG is currently deployed to an Ethereum testnet and was done so around the beginning of the year. Currently this version of Casper has been difficult to connect to due to P2P networking issues with the Pythereum client released by the Ethereum Foundation and it is also quite outdated now due to a lot of changes to the Casper contract since then, particularly in the last two months.
To ensure Rocket Pool works with Casper correctly, we have been busy developing direct integration of the latest copy of the Casper FFG 0.2.0 contract into our unit tests and replacing our existing DummyCasper contract that only simulated inputs/outputs of Casper. This is an exciting change as it means we can now test Rocket Pool instantly with any version of Casper, long before it hits any public testnet to ensure it’s integrated correctly in our system.
Rocket Pools unit tests as a result are now quite extensive and can take anywhere between 3–10 mins to run to completion depending on your system. Of course this trade off is absolutely welcomed, safety first after all.
Smart Nodes
Who doesn’t love a good smart node update? In order to earn interest on your ether deposit, Casper requires a full Ethereum node online 24/7 to help validate transactions on the network. Our smart nodes which perform this task for Rocket Pool users are not your standard Ethereum node, these guys have brains. They feature custom background processes that allow them to communicate with Rocket Pool’s smart contracts directly or listen for instructions from them.
In the first phase of Rocket Pool we plan on running the smart nodes ourselves to ensure a smooth roll out of the platform and network. However in the future our aim is to truly decentralise the network by allowing users and businesses to run their own smart nodes and in return, earn a commission on Rocket Pool’s users interest from users that have been staking on their smart node.
This last month we’ve been developing an early installer for our smart node servers, this installer will allow a user on a completely blank server to install everything needed to begin running a smart node for Rocket Pool. From selecting which Ethereum client you’d like to use (Parity / Geth) all the way through to installing that client and running our smart node daemon, it does it all.
This is only the first version of our installer and will no doubt be improved on as we develop out the platform even more.
Community
We’ve always been firm believers in substance over hype; we were one of the few projects in the space to have a fully working alpha before even announcing the project publicly and since then we’ve been committed to developing the technology / platform as best as possible, forming relationships with potential 3rd Parties and releasing a genuine project that’s been the result of a lot of hard work. We think this is exactly what the sector needs and is one of the reasons we’ve been so goal-orientated and focused on the technical milestones that need to be solved and hit, rather than hyping things just for a short term gain.
Now that we are approaching our beta and a potential Casper launch later in the year, we’ll be turning part of our focus to increasing our brand presence by bringing on an agency to help us spread the good word about Rocket Pool to the space at large. It won’t be hype, it’ll be cold hard facts about what we’re doing and what we’re trying to achieve. We’re currently in talks with several agencies and will make a decision soon as to the one we’ll be working with.
RPL Token Exchanges
Currently RPL is listed on several decentralised exchanges and work is underway to get it listed on several other exchanges. More updates on these in the future.
Current exchanges that support RPL are:
ForkDelta — https://forkdelta.github.io/#!/trade/RPL-ETH
EtherDelta — https://etherdelta.com/#RPL-ETH
Radar Relay — https://app.radarrelay.com/RPL/WETH
IDEX — https://idex.market/eth/rpl
Drop by for a chat!
We’re a friendly bunch and love talking about not only Rocket Pool, but all crypto related subjects, so swing by for a chat and say G’day! We have a Discord chat room anyone can join, so what are you waiting for?
If chat rooms aren’t your thing, we’re also on Twitter!
Contact Us
If you’re new to Rocket Pool or have any questions, we invite you to please check out our website and contact us there, on Twitter or join our Discord chat room group to get all news and updates before they are posted anywhere else.
