Rocket Pool — Prater Testnet Guides
Hello Rocket Poolers! In just a few days on the 2nd August, 2021 00:00 UTC. Our official Prater Testnet site will be open to the public, running from https://testnet.rocketpool.net. This is a release candidate for mainnet that will hopefully see minimal updates. If you’re unfamiliar with Rocket Pool or haven’t had the chance to learn about how a decentralised staking protocol for Ethereum works, we’d highly recommend you read our explainer series linked below for a great run down on the whole protocol.
As with our previous betas, there will be two ways to participate in this testnet. You can use our website to stake ETH and receive rETH, our liquid tokenised staking option. Or you can run a node in the network and maximise your staking returns by earning an extra ETH commission from the protocol and extra RPL rewards for collatorising your node against any penalties or slashing offenses.
We’ll also use this update to go over some of the many great changes since the last beta. Since then we’ve incorporated feedback from multiple audits with prominent firms ConsenSys Diligence and Sigma Prime. We’ve also listened closely to our community and added some really impressive improvements that make Rocket Pool completely trustless for node operators. To top that off, we’ve also made some really impressive gas optimisations at some of the most used points in our smart contracts.
rETH Tokenised Liquid Staking
If you wish to particpate in liquid staking using our rETH token, all you’ll need as a staker is a browser with the latest version of MetaMask and some Goerli ETH to stake, you’ll then be able to trade that for some tokenised staking goodness in the form of rETH. There’s a whole quick start guide below to get you started quickly and easily.
If you have any issues getting going, please jump into our Discord and look for the #testnet channel and ask away.
Node Operator Staking
Still the most easy way to run a node in ETH2 is using our custom smart node stack, it comes bundled with your choice of ETH1 client, your choice of ETH2 client and our own CLI which makes staking and running a node a breeze.
If you wish to try out running a node in the testnet, we have provided two guides below, one for node operators who already have access to a server to setup a node on and one for AWS, for those of you who wish to dabble in node operating without committing to a server of your own just yet.
Node Operator Quickstart Guide
Node Operator AWS Quickstart Guide
We highly encourage potential node operators to give the guides a go and see just how easy we make it. As a node operator, you’ll even have your choice of Lighthouse, Prysm, Nimbus or Teku as your ETH2 client should you wish to do so. How’s that for some client diversity!
Testnet Improvements
The official Rocket Pool Testnet has been a long time in the making, but for good reason. After several betas and audits, we’ve now created a version of Rocket Pool we feel is ready for prime time and by far the best version of itself that has ever been deployed.
We’ll go over some of the numerous improvements below, but there’s far too many to list for this article, so we’ll concentrate on the aspects we feel is most important to the users who help drive the protocol.
Node Operators — Opt-in Upgrades
One of the biggest changes to this testnet version of Rocket Pool is the new optional smart contract upgrade system. When a node operator creates a minipool validator, a smart contract is created that’s responsible for receiving the nodes deposit + rewards when they finish staking.
This contract was previously made upgradable to fix any potential issues that might pop up, but the node operator had no say in this previous system, now they do!
When an upgrade is released for this minipool, node operators can now choose to remain on the original smart contract that was created for their validator as long as they want or they can choose to upgrade to the new one if they are happy with it. There is also the option (off by default) to automatically use the latest upgrade if they don’t want to manually manage smart contract upgrades for their minipools.
Should the node operator upgrade their minipools smart contract and they change their mind, there is also the rollback option which allows a node operator to use their minipools previous smart contract.
Node operators are now in complete, trustless control of their own deposits.
Node Operators — Immutable Withdrawal Processing
In addition to the above, we have now included a withdrawal method that does not interact with any of Rocket Pools current upgradable smart contracts in any way.
This means that in the event of a malicious or buggy upgrade to a contract outside of the node operators control, the smart contract that receives the future withdrawal will always be able to process it and distribute the node operators share + rewards back to their set nodes withdrawal address.
The nodes withdrawal address is also stored on an immutable smart contract.
Gas Optimisations on Overdrive
There has been a staggering amount of gas optimisations across the board, we took a particular decent amount of time to make sure these commonly accessed points of Rocket Pool are now much more optimised and efficient to use.
Compared to just the previous beta which ended only a few months ago, this is a general comparison of the gas savings on these common access points:
- Staking ETH for rETH: 15% cheaper
- Node operator collecting RPL rewards: 30% cheaper
- All Contract -> Contract communication: 6% cheaper
- Many many more.
Well 15 points to you for making it this far! If you have testnet questions, feedback, bug reports or want to know a bit more about us, why not swing by for a chat and say G’day! You can view our website or have a chat with us in our chat room that anyone can join. If chat rooms aren’t your thing, we’re also on Twitter!
