Rocket Pool — Staking Protocol Part 4
Hello Rocket Poolers! Today we’re extremely excited to announce the launch date of our highly anticipated mainnet release. To say this is a huge milestone for the team and our beloved community would be an epic understatement.
Rocket Pool will be launching to mainnet on 9th November, 00:00 UTC.
After multiple betas over years, followed by multiple audits from some of the biggest in the industry, we’ve spared no effort to produce and refine a first ever decentralised staking protocol for Ethereum.
We originally had this release planned for the 6th October, but we decided to delay that due to the discovery of a very esoteric ETH2 staking issue. This issue was discovered through our bug bounty program and it would have affected not only us if we launched then, but it also affected several live staking platforms as well whom we quickly notified.
This article will cover mainnet release details, our initial set of launch Oracle DAO members, a new bug bounty program and information on our audit reports from Sigma Prime, ConsenSys Diligence and Trail of Bits. Now that’s an article!
Rocket Pool Liquid Staking Protocol Series
- Part 1 — Overview and Users of the protocol
- Part 2 — The Protocol and Oracle Node DAO’s
- Part 3 — RPL & Tokenomics
- Part 4 — Launch Details, oDAO Members and more
If you’re new to Rocket Pool or just need a refresher on the many aspects of it, we’d highly urge you to read our explainer series from the start. They cover super simple decentralised liquid staking with rETH, how to make a higher ROI by running a smart node in the protocol than staking solo, a guide on how the tokenomics drives all the actors in the protocol to work in everyone's best interests and much much more.
Mainnet Staking
Rocket Pool is a base layer protocol for Ethereum staking and it aims to align the interests of those who want to stake without running a node, with those who want to run a node and generate a higher return on their own staked ETH during the process.
This means there are currently two main ways to participate in Ethereum staking with Rocket Pool on mainnet.
Staking User or dApp
Don’t want to run and secure a node 24/7 but still want to enjoy all the benefits of staking rewards? Well, dear staking user or dApp, let’s introduce you to the concept of liquid tokenised staking with rETH. If you deposit ETH into the Rocket Pool smart contracts, you’ll instantly receive rETH which is a token that gains staking rewards over time depending on the performance of the node operators in the decentralised Rocket Pool protocol.
You can hold this token, trade it, sell it or whatever your heart desires. It will help provide liquidity for stakers and dApps until withdrawals are enabled for staking deposits and beyond, neat!
If you use stake.rocketpool.net, you’ll be able to get this rETH token when you deposit ETH. Then, if you want to claim ETH, you can trade your rETH right back after 24hrs, provided there’s good liquidity in the deposit pool. Or swap on any supported decentralised provider such as 1inch at the prevailing market price.
Tokenised Staking Quickstart Guide!
Node Operator
All hail the mighty node operator, backbone of the Rocket Pool protocol and purveyor of fine hardware and internet connections. If you want to see what it’s like running a node for the Rocket Pool protocol, this role will be right up your alley.
We know running an ETH node can be a little daunting, so we’ve made a pretty neat little package that will take care of all that for you. It’ll create a docker stack that includes your choice of Ethereum clients and a Rocket Pool client (makes depositing easy, launching validators, monitoring, interacting with our smart contracts and much more). This stack comes completely ready to go once installed.
Node Operator’s Quickstart Guide!
Documentation and Guides
If you’re an rETH staker, smart node operator or dApp developer that needs to know more about Rocket Pool, be it in the form of detailed guides or technical docs that let you know how to build on top of Rocket Pool, we have an abundance of these and more at https://docs.rocketpool.net
Mainnet Rollout
The mainnet launch will be a staged rollout; incrementally increasing the protocol’s total value staked. Rollout will occur in 4 short to medium length phases. The goal is to ensure everything is functioning as we progressively open it up, to more and more people.
Each stage will limit the number of minipools and the size of the rETH deposit pool. Once the minipool limit is reached new node operators will not be able to deposit until the next phase. Once the rETH deposit pool has reached its limit, stakers will not be able to swap ETH for rETH until the next phase. We hope to work through these stages quickly but we feel it is important to ensure everything is safe and sound.
We are extremely excited to be taking this final step towards mainnet and being able to share this with the Ethereum community. A big thank you to our supporters and community for being along on this ride with us, your feedback has been immensely helpful in shaping Rocket Pool as it approaches mainnet.
Oracle DAO Members
The Oracle DAO is a decentralised network of special nodes in the protocol that operate in a true on-chain DAO made just for Rocket Pool.
Members in this DAO can create proposals to invite new members, leave the DAO and much more. Importantly these nodes also help relay data between the Ethereum blockchain and our smart contracts.
As we’ve been an Ethereum staking community-orientated project from day 1, our primary goal when selecting initial ODAO members was to help support the staking community and the fantastic projects that drive it.
oDAO members earn RPL from the protocol’s tokenomics. Consequently, by creating a diverse oDAO membership of well-respected members of the staking community and ecosystem, we are actively funding their staking development and innovation.
With our initial launch members, the Rocket Pool decentralised staking protocol will initiate a positive feedback loop, where its success and decentralisation will empower collective funding of oDAO participating Ethereum staking projects. Our hope is that over time, funding contributions from Rocket Pool, could be second only to the Ethereum Foundation.
Launch Members
Rocket Pool will be launching with the following Oracle DAO members, listed in no particular order as we’re super proud of them all. The list represents the initial cohort and we will be adding more members in a second wave, a month or so after launching.
Lighthouse Beacon Client Team
One of the great primary ETH2 staking clients made by Sigma Prime. This client is written in Rust and has been at the forefront on ETH2 staking since it began. We have full support for Lighthouse and an analytics dashboard ready to go for any smart node operator that wishes to use it.
Nimbus Beacon Client Team
Another of the great primary ETH2 staking clients made by the great guys at Team Nimbus. Nimbus strives to be as lightweight as possible in terms of resources used. This allows it to perform well on embedded systems, resource-restricted devices — including Raspberry Pis, mobile devices and more.
Prysm Beacon Client Team
A great ETH2 client made by a bunch of great guys at Prysmatic Labs. Not only did it start out as a grass roots collective of devs interested in building an ETH2 staking client, they’ve now accomplished not only that, but have succeeded in helping it become one of the most used to date.
Etherscan / Beaconscan
If you haven’t used Etherscan before, you’ve probably never used Ethereum. Etherscan is the primary ETH1 block explorer, used far and wide throughout the ecosystem. They also have the new Beaconscan ETH2 explorer. We’re hoping their participation in the oDAO will help support them to keep doing what their doing, being integral to the ecosystem at large.
Beaconcha.in
The new open source ETH2 block explorer beaconcha.in is also making waves in the staking ecosystem. Getting ahead of the curve, they already feature some early Rocket Pool integrations with more planned for the future after mainnet to allow for easy exploring of our decentralised staking protocol.
ConsenSys Codefi
ConsenSys is the engineering and infrastructure leader at the forefront of the enterprise blockchain ecosystem, offering unrivaled Ethereum expertise. Codefi is their institutional staking arm and enables institutions to achieve ETH staking rewards running on Teku, the only institutional-grade Ethereum 2.0 validator client.
Blockdaemon
A leading independent blockchain infrastructure platform powering 25 million registered users across the platforms they support. Over the last year they have deployed more than 10,000 nodes across 40 blockchain networks and 20 global regions. They have averaged more than $5 billion in staked assets and is on track to have upwards of $50 billion by year end. They put the node in smart node!
Staked
Staked helps institutional investors reliably and securely compound their crypto assets via staking and lending. Staking on your own requires a capital investment up-front, specialty software and hardware expertise, servers in a data center, and exclusivity of block producers. Staked offers the industry’s only 100% SLA for block rewards, automatic payouts, and detailed reporting.
Blockchain Capital
Blockchain Capital was founded in 2013 with the mission of helping entrepreneurs build world-class companies and projects based on blockchain technology. The firm provides founders with capital, domain expertise, partnerships, recruiting, and strategy. Blockchain Capital is an active venture investor in the blockchain industry.
Bankless
One of the most well known community sources of information on DeFi, Ethereum and Bitcoin. David Hoffman and Ryan Sean Adams make up the Bankless duo that help blend money and tech insight to help you level up your open finance game. Be it podcasts or newsletters, there’s multiple ways to get your crypto fix with Bankless.
Superphiz / Ethstakers
As far as Ethereum staking communities goes, Ethstakers is the largest and most welcoming. A collective of knowledgeable individuals from all different levels, they’ve been ever present and highly helpful in the staking community. Superphiz has been at the forefront of this community and we are super happy to have him help represent this staking community in Rocket Pool.
Fire Eyes
A community born group focusing on decentralised governance and tokenomics. Fire Eyes worked developing Aave’s tokenomics before partnering with Rocket Pool almost a year ago to help develop the right incentives and tokenomics to help drive a first of its kind decentralised staking protocol for Ethereum.
CryptoManufaktur
A blockchain infrastructure service provider supporting decentralized protocols across the digital asset ecosystem. These guys are a community born provider, founded by Thorsten Behrens (aka Yorick Downe) who is a well known and passionate ETH2 expert known across many communities, he also has extensive security and networking experience.
Rocket Pool
No surprise there! To ensure we didn’t detract from the other awesome participants, we decided to round out the list with us at the bottom. We of course will be actively running nodes in this DAO and cannot wait to see it thrive. We’ll be looking to add new members to this DAO a little while after launch, just to see it gain an even more diverse and amazing membership.
Bug Bounty Launch
Inline with our commitment to security, we have officially kicked off our bug bounty program with Immunefi on 9th September, 2:00 AM UTC.
Immunefi is the premier bug bounty program for smart contracts and DeFi projects. A bug bounty program is an open invitation to security researchers to discover and disclose potential vulnerabilities.
Our audits were conducted by the best-in-the-business and they have done an amazing job, but there are some amazing researchers out there and we need your help to keep Ethereum staking decentralised and secure!
The bug bounty program focuses on our smart contracts. It will run pre-launch and will continue into mainnet operation.
Audit Reports
Our security audits are now finally complete — 3 audits spanning several months from major firms: Sigma Prime, Consensys Diligence, and Trail of Bits!
We would like to thank the audit teams for their hard-work and professionalism. To support transparency, we are in the process of making our audit reports public before launch through the auditing firms.
Before launch we will include them in an announcement and update our website with links to them on the respective auditing sites.
Questions or just say hello!
Well 50 points to you for making it this far, that was a whopper! If you have mainnet 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!
Rocket Pool is Ethereum’s most decentralised liquid staking protocol. Its 2,200+ worldwide node operators have staked over 440,000 ETH representing over 5% of all Ethereum staked.
Liquid stakers can participate by depositing as little as 0.01 ETH to receive the rETH liquid staking token. Rocket Pool is a fully non-custodial solution, and its node operators are economically-aligned to perform well for stakers.
Joining as a node operator is fully permissionless and requires just 16 ETH (instead 32). A boosted ROI is provided from both operator commission plus RPL rewards. For more information check out our node operator guide.
The Rocket Pool team have been in the staking space since its inception in 2016, which gives them a pedigree and track record without peer.
Take a look at the Rocket Pool website | Join the Rocket Pool community on Discord | Stay up to date with the latest news on Twitter | View all links on our Linktree
