Rocket Pool v1 Beta Launch — 19th July
We’re proud to announce that the Rocket Pool v1 Beta will be starting in a few weeks, on the 19th July, 2018 UTC. The beta site will be running from https://beta.rocketpool.net, be fully open to the public and will run for a month at the least. The current Rocket Pool website has also been given a face lift with our new modern look, please check it out if your haven’t had the chance or just want to learn a bit more about what we’re on about.
All participants in the beta will receive some RPL, our main utility token after the beta has concluded. We’ll be assigning 5,000 RPL to the beta which will be divided among all unique participants who deposit some testnet ether into the beta while it’s running.
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 next year. 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.
The Setup
The Rocket Pool v1 Beta will be running on our very own Proof of Authority Ethereum sidechain testnet. It will also feature a built-in faucet for people who wish to grab some testnet ether to stake with Casper on our smart nodes.
Interaction with the beta will be through MetaMask and we’ll be supplying the URL for the RPC connection in an upcoming guide on how to get started with the beta, its features and general usage.
Parameters
The beta will feature shorter parameters than that of the live Casper contract; it wouldn’t be much of a beta if we made everyone wait 4 months to withdraw their sweet sweet testnet ether ;)
Testnet Block Time: 5 seconds.
Testnet Faucet: 20 ether — every 24hrs per account.
Deposit Min: 1 ether.
Deposit Max: 12 ether — this is the maximum per deposit.
Deposit Terms: 1 day, 2 days and 3 days respectively.
Withdrawal Min: 0 ether.
Withdrawal Max: 10 ether — this is the maximum per withdrawal.
Minipool Launch: 32 ether — this is the amount of ether a minipool requires before its deposit is sent to Casper to stake; there can be many users in one of these.
Minipool Max Amount: 15 — this is how many Minipools the beta will allow; first come, first served. If you want to participate and there are no Minipools available, come back the next day and you’ll hopefully get a spot :)
Casper Deposit Min: 32 ether
Casper Logout Time: 8 minutes — When a Minipool’s deposit term is up, it is automatically logged out from Casper; this takes 8 minutes. On the live Casper, this will take almost a week.
Casper Withdrawal Delay: 16 minutes — When a Minipool has been logged out, it must wait an additional delay before it receives its deposit back from the Casper contract. On the live Casper, this is 4 months!
Casper Contract
For the v1 Beta we’ll be using the very recently deprecated 0.2.0 Casper FFG contract. Like a lot of the community, the change in the approach to Casper was sudden and unforeseen by us, with the new Casper being integrated into the client rather than a stand alone contract. We had developed Rocket Pool with this contract in mind for some time and even integrated it fully into our unit tests, so we decided to keep going with the beta full steam ahead and let the original Casper live on, even for just a little while longer.
For the new Casper, we’ll be making a few technical changes to our approach to ensure compatibility with the new client/beacon chain based approach. Many of these changes will be improvements we actually had planned for Rocket Pool 2.0, but given the change in Casper’s direction and unknown timelines for its release, we’re going to get on the front foot and start implementing these additions now. More info on that to come in the future.
Screenshots
For those of you who have a shortage on patience, here’s a few screenshots of the upcoming beta in action. This is the first release of the Rocket Pool UI and will no doubt evolve over time with feedback. Its main purpose for now is to test the design of Rocket Pool and put its contracts through their paces.
Community
If you’d like to get any news about the beta first or even give us feedback while it’s running, the quickest way is to jump into our Discord chat room group and join the #beta channel.
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.
