ETH2, Our Vision

The launch of the Beacon Chain today marks a significant milestone in Ethereum’s migration to Proof of Stake. As the most anticipated upgrade in Ethereum’s five year history, we’re excited to usher in Phase 0 of ETH2 as a non-custodial, community-owned staking protocol.

With the ability for anyone with 32 ETH to serve a crucial role in securing the network by running a validator, the protocol as home to a flourishing ecosystem has never been closer to its vision.

As we develop Rocket Pool to support ETH2 infrastructure, it’s important to remember that not everyone has 32 ETH, and not everyone is capable of running their own node.

But that doesn’t mean they should be excluded. Rocket Pool has committed to aligning itself with Ethereum’s values of inclusivity, innovation, and trustlessness.

This is why we built Rocket Pool. It’s the first project to focus on giving everyone a means of participating in ETH2 staking with any amount of ETH, without having to run a node, while maintaining the core values of Ethereum.

For the past two years, we’ve been working alongside ETH2 research teams to iterate, expand and develop on top of the Beacon Chain you see today. While early beacon chain specs were not without their flaws, Rocket Pool has been extremely purposeful in ensuring the protocol always maintains the ethos, values and security of Ethereum itself.

While Phase 0 marks the start of ETH staking, Rocket Pool will be choosing to launch following the implementation of smart contract withdrawals, to adhere to the non-custodial, trustless nature of the staking solution we set out to build over two years back. This is expected in Q1 of 2021 and we’ll hope to launch along side it.

Here’s why.

Decentralised trustless staking infrastructure is crucial for the success of ETH2

Why Rocket Pool?

Rocket Pool differentiates itself from the majority of Staking as a Service providers through two core concepts: Decentralisation and Trustlessness.

Currently, Phase 0 doesn’t support withdrawals to smart contract addresses. This means that in order to democratise staking in the current environment, projects must utilize a centralised custodian to control validator withdrawal keys.

If Rocket Pool were to launch under these conditions, it would introduce a number of trust issues that are not worth sacrificing our core values and risking user deposits. In particular:

A custodian would have full control over all funds deposited while contract withdrawals are unavailable. This would continue for the entire duration of Phase 0 (12–24 months).
A Rocket Pool network upgrade would be required to transition to a decentralised withdrawal model, bringing its own set of technical challenges.
User deposits would be fragmented between the custodian pre-upgrade, and a smart contract post-upgrade.

While shipping Rocket Pool’s decentralised, non-custodial staking solution is a top priority, we believe that holding off until this critical piece of infrastructure is available is the right decision, to preserve the integrity of Rocket Pool and the wider ETH2 network.

During this next phase of the beacon chain launch, we wanted to highlight why Rocket Pool is holding off — as illustrated by Dan Elizter in this piece ‘The DETH of Ethereum’, the risks around staking centralisation are significant. Although some ETH will naturally flow into these centralised staking-as-a-service solutions, Rocket Pool wants to keep the wider Ethereum community informed on the risks & downsides of these platforms which assume trust.

The key takeaway? Any staking solution allowing deposits of less than 32 ETH is currently doing this in a trusted way where a centralised intermediary controls the funds.

What’s Next?

Rocket Pool will continue to monitor and build around ETH2 and the integration of smart contract withdrawals.

Simple eth1 withdrawals (beacon-chain centric)

Simple eth1 withdrawals (beacon-chain centric) [This is a followup and alternative proposal to @technocrypto's Dirt…

ethresear.ch

This proposal from Danny Ryan outlines the specification for one possible technical implementation of ETH2 withdrawals to smart contracts. This is a fantastic step from Danny and the ETH2 team, and it’s something we want to show massive support for!

In the meantime, be on the lookout for more details and announcements from Rocket Pool as the network approaches mainnet launch, including more information on the RPL token, rETH’s role in DeFi and the forthcoming launch of a non-custodial, community-owned staking protocol.

This week, I’ll be speaking on two panels — showcasing the progress Rocket Pool has made to date, and a glimpse into the evolving landscape that is ETH2 staking.

Dec 3rd 6–8PM UTC — Staking Economy ETH2 Event by Chorus One
Dec 3rd 10PM UTC — ConsenSys AMA and Beta Demo

As always, we invite anyone and everyone to join the conversation on Discord and look forward to the moment Rocket Pool has long been building towards!

Beta Rewards Update

If you recently participated in our very successful beta on the Medalla testnet, you’ll be elated to know that all RPL rewards have now been airdropped into the wallets that you participated with.

We’ve also giving away another 10K RPL for the Pyrmont beta that is currently running @ https://beta.rocketpool.net, so if you missed out on the Medalla beta, dive right into the Pyrmont beta and get a share of those rewards for participating and helping strengthen decentralised staking in ETH2.

Rocket Pool 2.5 — Beta Guides

Hello Rocket Poolers! Our Medalla beta will be starting in just under a week, on the 6th of October, 2020 00:00 UTC…

medium.com

Get started by staking or running a node in the beta using our guides here!

As we had unprecedented demand for the Medalla beta, we are tweaking the way RPL rewards will be distributed for the Pyrmont beta to make them more substantial for all recipients. We’re also setting an end date for the rewards period — 26th January 2021 @ 00:00 UTC (although the beta itself may run for longer).

Bucket 1 (regular stakers): 5 RPL each will be distributed to 600 randomly selected addresses which deposited any amount of ETH to the Rocket Pool website between now and the end date.
Bucket 2 (node operators): 10 RPL each will be distributed to 300 randomly selected addresses which registered as a node with Rocket Pool between now and the end date.
Bucket 3 (node operators): 4,000 RPL will be distributed to the top 300 best performing nodes between now and the end date. A node's performance will be judged based on the total rewards earned by their two best validators (this means that running more validators won't increase your chances). RPL rewards will be weighted based on rewards earned by the validators, so those at the top of the list will receive more.

RPL Tokenomics and Governance

Also for those who haven’t seen it, Rocket Pool has a suite of proposals live on the governance forum, covering everything from RPL tokenomics to governance and launch strategies. Please drop by and let us know your 2c!

Questions or just say hello!

Well 10 points to you for making it this far! If you have questions 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!