Rocket Pool

I'm your host, Oscar. Head of Product at Exponential and also DeFi degen at the core. Exponential DeFi is a platform where we want to bring more rationality into the space and make it more accessible to more types of investors. In Degen Responsibly, we invite product builders and protocol builders to talk about their innovations, what makes their protocols unique, as well as how they manage and mitigate risk. Today, we have Rocketpool, the makers of RETH, as our featured guests. Hey there, can you hear me? Yeah. Hey, David. See, what's fun about all of these conversations is that I always ask or start with a rather personal question, which is how did you get started with DeFi and whether you decided it was time to go all in? Sorry, just trying to coordinate behind the scenes there. I can certainly answer that question for myself. My involvement with DeFi is a lot shorter than the age of Rocketpool, which I think for most people in protocols in this space is a little bit unusual. Rocketpool being around since 2016 and ICOing in 2017. For me, a lot more recently, from a kind of passive involvement around 2019 or so to kind of following a bit of a slippery slope to the point where I am now doing marketing for Rocketpool. That was as of last year, about nine or so months ago. I suppose that's at that point you could consider I was fully transformed to degenning responsibly. But it certainly is a very interesting time to get involved with Rocketpool or probably any protocol in the liquid staking space, I would say. There's been a lot of attention since, I think it was New Year's Day, that for whatever reason, everything seemed to kick off and coming into the Shanghai upgrade. Yeah, I don't think that's going to slow down. Yeah, so relatively more recent than maybe a lot of us are here. But still, it's definitely one of the hottest spaces. Probably in the last six months, all the space of liquid staking and all the space of liquid staking and the race to gain more staked ETH into the system. So definitely a hot space. Darren just joined. Let's see if he can connect this time. Yeah, our view at Rocketpool is that right now, the amount of ETH that's staked is relatively low. It may not grow to be as big as on some other chains, but we still see huge potential in terms of the size of the pie growing, so to speak. There are a lot of protocols out there, and we believe that the best thing for Ethereum is to have a number of decentralized and permissionless staking protocols where the amount of ETH that's staked can be split across them. But regardless, we think Shanghai will be an important milestone, and we'll likely see some inflows in terms of ETH being staked by people who, for whatever reason, may not have been willing to commit before there was a clear path to that ETH being able to be withdrawn. Yeah, definitely. I think with the upcoming Shanghai Capella updates, that will inspire or motivate more people to stake their ETH now that it becomes a 2-way door rather than a 1-way door with an unclear and indefinite timeline, as it was even up to as late as last year. Before we jump into the details, I think we can start by a quick explanation. We're five, one is RocketPool, and what is the problem that you're solving? Sounds good. I can probably take that one. As of today, RocketPool is the only permissionless As of today, RocketPool is the only permissionless liquid staking protocol, at least talking about Ethereum here. So by permissionless, what that means is anyone can be a node operator, anyone can help to secure the Ethereum blockchain. For many liquid staking protocols, that is not an option. A lot of them out there restrict the ability to participate as a node operator to only large corporations or people that they decide and deem worthy to participate. At RocketPool, we try to put decentralization at number one as much as possible. Part of that is the reason why it's taken a little while for RocketPool to launch, despite, as I said before, tracing roots back to 2016, doing an ICO in 2017. The protocol only launched to mainnet in late 2021, so 18 or so months ago. The problem that we're trying to solve is the fact that outside of RocketPool, the only way to participate in Ethereum validation, node operation, is if you have 32 ETH, and that is quite a high barrier to entry. Even if someone does have 32 ETH, are they willing to lock it up without a certain path towards withdrawals? Maybe not. For other people, it may be a large portion of their crypto portfolio to commit to one certain area. It might not be prudent risk management for them. Then for a lot of people, they just don't have 32 ETH, because even today, it's still a lot of money. RocketPool makes this whole process a lot more accessible. I suppose it's worth clarifying, when we talk about node operation, it is technically possible to operate an Ethereum node without committing any ETH. But in order to earn a reward on staked ETH, obviously, you have to stake it. And for every 32 ETH, that's what we call one validator. So that is the minimum requirement, 32 ETH, to earn return on staked ETH. So with RocketPool, there are two options. If you are comfortable with running a node, you don't have to contribute 32 ETH. At right now, we hope to halve that requirement to just 16, and later on, likely next month, there will be a further protocol update that reduces that requirement to just 8 ETH. There is another component with our RPL token that we can perhaps talk about later on. But in terms of the Ethereum requirement, lowering that barrier to entry, making it a lot easier for people to participate in securing the Ethereum network, that's the problem that we help to solve. And there's one other aspect, which is the technical requirements. Not necessarily so easy to do if you don't have a technical background. A node is a piece of hardware that you have in your home. You need to have it connected to an internet connection, you need to have a relatively reliable electricity supply, and you need to perform periodic updates to keep this hardware running. It has to run certain software to secure the Ethereum network. RocketPool helps to remove some of that complexity with a software package. So less ETH required, making the process easier. And as of today, we are the only protocol that will let anyone in the world, wherever they are, run a node. So that's what we're doing. And it's a pretty exciting time with not only the Shanghai upgrade coming up, but also, as I mentioned, this protocol upgrade that will reduce the ETH requirement to just 8. So we're pretty excited about that in particular. And just from the time that the team spent at ETH Denver, along with over 50 amazing volunteers from our community of node operators and liquid stakers, there's a lot of interest in terms of people wanting to help to secure the Ethereum network. With RocketPool, that 8 ETH requirement suddenly is very achievable for a lot of people. Interesting. So let's recap some of the things that you just mentioned. I think on the one hand, you can stick your ETH directly with the protocol, and that's fully permissionless. But you have some high requirements. Specifically, you need 32 ETH, and you need most likely a fully dedicated person to operate all your infrastructure to make sure that you're running 24x7 and making the most out of that staked capital that you have there. And that's not really for everyone, even if you have the capital. Then you have the other staking pools like LIDO or Coinbase that are permissioned. So they need to approve you as an operator for you to participate with their staking pools and get access to those staking block rewards. And then there is a third option, which is a RocketPool way in which just with 16 ETH and in the future only 8 ETH, you stake the capital, you integrate at a software level, and then you can start validating and getting access to those staking rewards. Is that correct? Yeah, that's the one. So not only does running a node, does validating help to secure Ethereum, the rewards are also pretty good, and in most cases higher than participating as a liquid staker. Certainly within RocketPool, the return for running a node just in terms of the ETH rewards that you would receive for a given amount of ETH that you deposit is going to be higher if you commit to running a node than liquid staking. Although on the other hand, there are some benefits and advantages to participating as a liquid staker. Me, for myself, and perhaps relevant based on the start of this call, an internet connection may be not so great down here in New Zealand. Also travel around a bit. I don't currently operate a node, but I do a liquid stake, and for me the flexibility is a benefit. And at the end of the day, the way that at least RocketPool operates, we need both node operators and liquid stakers. There's kind of two parts of the protocol, and ideally they need to be in balance as much as possible. So it's up to everyone to have a bit of a think and figure out which is best for them. We have people in our community who don't have a technical background and have been able to launch and keep a node running. There's heaps of documentation, heaps of support in the RocketPool discord. If you're willing to put a little bit of time into it, it is really achievable for anyone. And at the end of the day, the time that you're investing is really, most of it is going into learning more about Ethereum. So that's got to be a good thing. Increasing your knowledge about Ethereum, about crypto, that's a big plus. But at the same time, people may want to simply do a token swap, and all of a sudden your liquid staking, very easy to do, very flexible. There's certainly benefits to both sides. Yeah, so you bring up a really good point, which is on the one hand, you have the stakers. On the other hand, you have the liquid stakers, which are, in a way, providing their ETH, I guess, as a complement to their 16 ETH that the other providers are providing. the node operators are seeking. So what happens when there's not enough demand or not enough supply for any of the two sides of the equation? Because you need both at the end of the day. Yeah, that's a good point. So maybe the easiest way to start off is by looking at a permissioned liquid staking protocol, like some of those examples you mentioned previously. So in that case, the node operators essentially operate like, I suppose, an IT company in that they don't stake any of their own Ethereum. They don't have any of their capital at stake. All they're doing is they're running the hardware, keeping it online. And then when deposits come in from liquid stakers, those ETH deposits are assigned in batches of 32 ETH to become validators. So in this situation, the liquid stakers depositing their ETH, they're trusting the node operators to behave, to perform and to keep the nodes running. Because at the end of the day, if there is a mistake, an error, glitch in the matrix, whatever you want to call it, a storm takes out a power grid or an internet service provider goes down, the node operator is kind of off the hook because they don't have any of their ETH that's going to get penalised. It's the liquid stakers who will have to bear the brunt of any penalty. But for Rocketpull, it's a little different. So right now, there's a requirement for the node operator to contribute 16 ETH. So while there are some higher returns, those returns come with a risk in that if, for whatever reason, a node operator fails to keep their node online, they may incur some small penalties. Most of the time, these penalties are quite small. You may have heard of slashing and have some idea of your safety being cut down quite drastically, but this is almost always never the case. For example, if a node is offline for a week or so, once it's back online, you can probably earn back the penalties with a week of being online. So relatively small, but in extreme cases, it could add up. So the node operator's 16 ETH that they put up as collateral, that will get drawn down from first in the case of penalties being applied. So because the node operator has to put up this ETH, you could say that there is a limited number of people willing to A, launch a node, and B, have ETH that they're also willing to stake. The permissioned protocol, by comparison, can scale infinitely because all they need to do is have additional nodes that they launch, and then a steady stream of deposits comes in. But for Rocketpool, there's kind of those two sides of the equation that we talked about. One being a node operator, they have to contribute ETH, one being the liquid staker. If there is more demand on one side than the other, then the protocol can't match up those two halves. So right now, there's quite a lot of demand for liquid staking. So much so that the RETH token, it actually trades at a price premium on secondary markets because of the constraint. Once more node operators are willing to launch validators, that imbalance, so to speak, may shift back the other way. So we're expecting the combination of Atlas, which will increase the capital efficiency of the node operators, only requiring them to put up 8 ETH instead of 16, and the ability for existing solo node operators to migrate across to Rocketpool. We expect that to result in a quite significant influx of node operators. At that point, we may see everyone wants to run a node, but how many people want to deposit ETH as liquid stakers? It's an interesting dynamic, and it's one that's unique to a permissionless and decentralized protocol like Rocketpool. But we're pretty confident that the events of hopefully next month will result in quite significant growth. Yeah, it's a very, very interesting time. We're really looking forward to it. The protocol upgrade is looking pretty good. We've done a couple of random audits, and there's a community town hall coming up in a couple of days, actually tomorrow, where we'll discuss this in detail. Yeah, I mean, you also bring a good point, which is about audits. Rocketpool is one of the most audited protocols that we are tracking. We count at least six audits in the last year and a half, two years maybe. So that's something to applaud to the team. There's strong emphasis on fund and infrastructure security, especially when so much capital is at stake, literal at stake. Yeah, that's definitely a key part. I'm not sure what it is right now, but Rocketpool's TBL did hit 1 billion recently. And yeah, I think protocol that kind of displays relevant security information in a really easy to understand way, like you guys do, is pretty important to highlighting what some market participants may struggle to find, or even if they do find, may not fully understand. Some of these protocols are quite complex. Football is one of them. You can probably see that by looking at other protocols who have attempted or intended to become or launch permissionless staking protocols. It's kind of easier said than done. Part of that is due to the complexity. And yeah, having a way to explain all of that in very simple language, I think, is quite valuable. Yeah, thank you. In fact, Dawei, also here in this conversation, is the giga brain behind a lot of those reports. I can invite him to speak a bit later on. But let's move on with the conversation as well. You mentioned that you expect some of the solenoid operators to move to Rocketpool. What would be one of the advantages of moving from being a solenoid operator to Rocketpool, for instance? There are a couple of things that come to mind. I think, first of all, to give some context, it was possible to start operating a node solo, so to speak, with 32 ETH, before Rocketpool launched. I had to mention that Rocketpool has been around since 2016, only launched to mainnet relatively recently. So that gap in between, a lot of people who wanted to help participate in Ethereum's Proof-of-Stake, the only option was to launch a node themselves. They didn't have Rocketpool as an option back then. And of course, because the ETH that they've staked can't be withdrawn yet, they were kind of stuck into that choice. And it's only with Shanghai that there's an opportunity to withdraw that ETH and move to Rocketpool instead. Also important to note that technically, it's not a withdrawal of the ETH, or at least the node operator won't have to go through what we call the withdrawal queue, and instead they can quite seamlessly migrate across to Rocketpool. So there are a few different reasons why someone might want to do this. Perhaps the most significant, although it's not the only reason, is the increased yield. So because operating a node solo with 32 ETH, there's no liquid staking component. This means that the node operator is just receiving rewards, kind of the base Ethereum protocol rewards. But with Rocketpool, if you had 32 ETH in a single validator, you could instead split that into 4 of these new validators, each with 8 ETH. And then of these 4 validators, you would get 24 ETH worth of liquid staking deposits. So that's almost 100 ETH, if I've done my maths correct, 96 ETH that you're earning commission on. So you still have with 32 ETH staked earning return, but now all of a sudden you have 96 ETH of liquid staking deposits you're earning a commission on. So what about community members? Rand did a bit of quick maths and they came out to around 42% higher return in ETH terms of moving to Rocketpool. But yeah, quite a significant boost. You're talking about almost 50% more. That would certainly entice some people to move over. There are some other benefits too. So it's not just all about the return. One thing that Rocketpool does provide is what we call the smoothing pool. And so in times where there's a lot of activity on the Ethereum blockchain, there's been a few examples recently, whether that's some crisis or on the other hand, it could be an entertainment. Sometimes there's a spike in activity. Gas goes up quite a lot. It's possible for the node operators to earn additional rewards a little bit more than they usually would. There's a few different names for this kind of return. You may have heard of it referred to as NEV or MEV, tips that may be paid to expedite transactions because you need to get in there quickly before other people. And this is a bit of a lottery. Another term that you may have heard is a lottery block. For whatever reason, some blocks in the blockchain, they pay out higher rewards than others. So you might be lucky, you might be unlucky. As a node operator, your job is to secure the blockchain. Maybe you're lucky and you hit one of these so-called lottery blocks and you get a significant payout. Sometimes this is two ETH, four ETH. It could be more ETH than you have staked. Some of them are very large indeed, albeit very rare. So Rocketpool introduced the smoothing pool that I mentioned. And essentially it's a way to, if you opt in, join the so-called smoothing pool, all of these tips, this NEV that you earn is pooled in one location. And at the end of each period, it's divided up equally between the participants. Essentially what you're doing is you're converting a chance at a higher return. And in return, you receive a lower, albeit more consistent payout. So for some people that might be preferable. Certainly if you're looking to forecast your return into the future, probably a more reliable return. Again, another one of our community members, they ran some analysis, quite a thorough paper on the probabilities. And for most participants, it ends up being a positive outcome. So that's another reason why people might want to move across to Rocketpool. A third reason is the LSD space, or as we now call it LST, default derivative, which is now a bit of a dirty word. Yeah, for no reason. A token, liquid staking token. Right now, the liquid staking token space is a bit more centralised, quite centralised in fact, compared to ETH staking as a whole. So to a certain extent, a solo node operator moving across to Rocketpool, they facilitate some RETH being minted, they are facilitating a decentralised liquid staking token. You could perhaps make a point that that is in some way supporting decentralisation there, although at the same time, it is important still that there are some node operators running a 32 ETH solo node, separate of any protocol, completely agnostic. And some Rocketpool operators choose to do that, they do both, or we have some people who are right now running a solo node, but they want to keep that running and maybe they'll launch a Rocketpool one as well. Shanghai withdrawals, that will make this a lot more accessible to a lot of people. Yeah, what I'm starting to take away is that providing stake to the network is such a valuable commodity that anyone should be able to do it. Now, in the current world, or in the world without Rocketpool, you need to be permissioned by any of these big centralised actors to do it. But now with Rocketpool, with half as much ETH, you can start staking and in the future, you only need a quarter of the minimum required, which is 32 ETH, to start validating. And it's not only about the permissionless side, but also you have much better returns because of this moving function and this operational leverage that you have by only providing half as much ETH with a similar return profile. Also, you gain liquidity in your staked capital through RETH. If you stake solo, you have a big opportunity cost, which is 32 ETH permanently frozen in the system, whereas with Rocketpool ETH or RETH, you get access to that liquidity and you can something else with that capital. Maybe you can orgo against it, or you can form something else using the token in a DEX or any other protocol that accepts RETH. So there are multiple advantages, but at the same time, the staking spectrum, the difficulty spectrum is so wide. It can be as easy as just swapping your ETH for RETH and automatically you're participating in the network, or it can be as complicated as running your own nodes as a solo node operator and everything in between. So there's something for everyone. Not everyone has to agree on what is the correct way, but certainly if you're looking to maximize capital and don't trade off liquidity or opportunity costs, Rocketpool can be a great option for you if you want to participate in the network as an operator. It is an interesting point that you bring up in terms of the opportunity costs, because this is sometimes mentioned in the context of does it make sense to run a node? Because while the initial return that you receive, as I mentioned before, is higher if you're running a node compared to liquid staking, a liquid staker can then go and use, as you said, their RETH token or their other liquid staking token elsewhere in the ecosystem within DeFi. Hyperstaking is one example of how you can degen somewhat responsibly, I guess, with a liquid staking token. Essentially the way that works is if you hold RETH, say it's paying out 4%, kind of a long-term average return, what you could do is you could go and use that as collateral in the lending protocol and you could borrow ETH against it. Usually the rate that you would pay to borrow ETH is quite low, say it's just 2%. Well then what you could do is you can take that ETH and you can stake it and get more RETH and then you could take that RETH back to the protocol and say, hey, I've got some more RETH, can I use it again as collateral and create a loop in that way. So long as the price of the liquid staking token stays where it should or higher, there's a loss towards the returns and the costs remain where they are. It's a way of kind of using DeFi to leverage along a position. Obviously, you know, the word leverage, that comes with a whole lot of risks, so it's up to everyone to decide whether that is what's going on. But there is that thing to take into account. Some people may not wish to incur that additional risk. They may not want to have to look after their positions and monitor them. I've been told by members of our community that running a node is relatively passive. You can kind of set it and forget it. And in many cases, more of kind of a passive activity compared to perhaps chasing around yields on DeFi, exposing yourself to liquidation risk, additional smart contract risk, oracle risk and the like. So yeah, options for everyone. There's no perfect answer. Certainly when it comes to liquid staking versus node operation, Rocketpool needs both sides to function properly. So to a certain extent, they're just as important as each other. And also at Rocketpool, we believe that we need multiple protocols to participate in liquid staking. As a result, the Rocketpool team and then the Rocketpool protocol DAO, they're both in alignment that Rocketpool should start to self-limit our rate of growth. Right now, we're relatively small, but in the future, should that change, we don't want to pose a risk to the ecosystem. And at least one other protocol has kind of also gone down that path of indicating that they agree to self-limit. Yeah. So we really want to see other liquid staking protocols working towards becoming as decentralized as possible, permissionless, enabling anyone to run a node, because it can't just be Rocketpool as their only option. It's not healthy for anyone really at all. Yeah. And when it comes to staking, the more the merrier. What we want is a fully decentralized network where not any single party can get full access of the network or even break that one-third, two-thirds consensus guardrails. And so in a way, the more protocols self-governance, it's a net win for everyone that participates in the Ethereum ecosystem. So that's also quite commendable that you're thinking already ahead as to how will you limit your staking power in a way. At the same time, Dawei, I think you have a question. Thanks, Oskar. Maverick just had a question more so around the governance process for RocketDAO. You know, it's a pretty unique structure where you have a dual DAO structure, one with the protocol DAO and one Oracle DAO. So I wanted to get a hopefully a clearer picture of what permissions are granted to each of those DAOs and what they're responsible for as part of the overall ecosystem. Sure. I think this is the part where we ideally want Lang is up on the stage, but I'll give it a shot. So the difference between these two DAOs is first of all, the protocol DAO is comprised of node operators. So simply holding the RPL token is not enough to grant governance rights. It has to be staked as part of a node. What this allows is the node operator then to act in the protocol DAO. So the protocol DAO or PDAO as we like to call it, the main role is to kind of signal towards the team and to direct the future of the protocol. So while compared to other protocols and perhaps considering the age of RocketPool, the protocol DAO is relatively in its infancy, there's already been a couple of quite important governance votes which have changed or reinforced the certain course of where RocketPool is heading. One being, for example, the vote to agree in principle to a self-limiting framework. Another one a little while ago being a vote to set up how certain rewards are paid out to node operators within the protocol. So in this sense, the protocol DAO plays a pretty big role in directing where RocketPool should head because it's essentially the voice of the node operators themselves. There are two main sub-components or sub-committees to this DAO. One is what we call the IMC or the Incentive Management Committee. That was initiated or kind of got off the ground first, the sooner of the two sub-committees. As the name suggests, the IMC is responsible for directing token incentives to promote liquidity for R8, the liquid staking token. So they've done a great job in helping to boost the liquidity which especially prior to Shanghai, prior to withdrawals, is very important because liquidity is essentially the ability to buy and sell R8 on secondary markets. And for a liquid staking token to be liquid, you obviously need some liquidity. That's one area where the DAO has really kind of taken up that task and executed it independently completely from the team. So to be honest, we don't have a lot of time to focus on the liquidity side of things. DAO is undertaking an excellent role here. The second part is the GMC. So this stands for the Grants and Bounties Management Committee. They also are able to direct some token rewards for paying out on grants and bounties, anything that kind of assists with the protocol development. There's been one round so far, that was back in January I believe. Part of it was a retrospective payment as well for work carried out in the past. In a sense, the GMC can kind of act as an extension of the team in terms of helping to incentivize and to reward actions that help to grow the Rocketpool protocol. So with only six core team members, just like the IMC, the GMC has already been doing a great job helping to reward and to facilitate people working on Rocketpool. So let's jump across to the Oracle DAO network. Slightly different, the Oracle DAO's main role is to perform, as the name suggests, oracle duties. So you may be aware of Chainlink, probably the household name when it comes to oracles, due to current limitations in the way that Ethereum works, the way that smart contracts work, the way that data can be moved around. A liquid staking protocol like Rocketpool requires DAO services to, sorry, requires oracle services to ensure that information can be moved around and calculations performed so that the protocol continues to work. And so this is a group of entities, largely well known within the industry, listed on the Rocketpool homepage. I believe we're up to 15 or 16 now. And just, I guess, the best way to describe them is these are the people who are helping to build Ethereum. So obviously you have the Ethereum Foundation, the researchers, the developers, but outside of that we have, for example, the client teams who are building the software that enables people to run nodes. Gitcoin, which you may have heard of, was recently voted on to join the Oracle DAO. And the Oracle DAO forms also an important security role in terms of, I guess, another line of checking, a line of defense, to any upgrades that are made to the RocketPool protocol. So while some of the team engineers may submit proposals to update the protocol, such as with this latest Atlas update I mentioned, that still needs to go past a check from the Oracle DAO. So they will review the update and vote on whether it should proceed or not, taking direction from the protocol DAO to make their call. So two quite different parts, but they both needed to work together to make sure. Oops, sorry. Go ahead, Rick. Sorry, can you hear me again? Yeah, Dave, our founder, has been working to expand the Oracle DAO network. I kind of mentioned before that Gitcoin has been voted on. I think there's going to be a vote soon about Coinbase Ventures, which is an interesting development. They're likely to, if the vote passes, join the Oracle DAO too. So the idea is to get a large variety of entities or people, of companies, different geographical locations, jurisdictions, different roles within the Ethereum ecosystem, really just like a cross-section of everyone who is committed to building Ethereum. And they provide that important role by keeping RocketPool operational. Yeah, it's a pretty interesting slide because it reminded me of like a two-body system, like with a lower chamber and a higher chamber, or Congress and Senate, where you have the protocol DAO that is the beating heart of the protocol operations. And on the other hand, you have all the major players in the ecosystem chipping in with governance and EOS. And in a way, both serve as checks and balances on each other. So quite an interesting design to governance. Yeah, that's the main idea, really. In the future, it may be possible to perform some of these tasks, these Oracle DAO tasks, in a more automated manner. There's some research being undertaken right now, both by the protocol DAO, via that GMC, that Grants and Bounties Management Community that I mentioned before. They've funded some research into it. And also, the team is looking to into some options. I believe there was at least one interesting development during ETH Denver. I think that was Langos, maybe one of our engineers, were talking about some new technology that could help to even further decentralize some of these tasks that the Oracle DAO network performs. So it's always something that's in the front of our minds. Even back to 2016, when Rocket was founded, the whole goal has been to be as decentralized as possible from day one. And that is part of the reason why the launch to mainnet was delayed. It was so late. Dave and co were making sure that when they did launch, that the protocol was designed in such a way that we could remove as much trust as we could from the mainnet. That we could remove as much trust from the situation as possible. Instead of starting out as a permissioned service, and then over time moving towards one that's decentralized. That's a path that a lot of other protocols right now are attempting to take. And yeah, it seems to be not so easy. So certainly wish them all the best. But we feel that starting out with that mindset from day one is the way to go where possible. Yeah, that's a vision statement. And again, quite commendable that all of your actions are geared towards that. We're also running out of time. We have a few minutes left. I think the last question that I have for you guys, Blankers, feel free to reply on the tweets, is right now there's roughly 14-15% of ETH staked. What would be your best guess for that number in five years? Is it going to be 30% or maybe like other networks that have 70-80% of their native currency staked? What would be your vision or goal? This is a very interesting question. So first of all, we believe that the future to kind of grow through Robert Paul and for other staking protocols is to grow the entire pie as large as possible, rather than kind of squabble over market share. Although that will still be a sector. As you've said or indicated, there is a lot of room to grow. There's a lot more ETH that could be staked. I would say one thing that really sticks out to me, I've seen various comparisons with other proof-of-stake chains, is that ETH is actually quite useful. You can do a lot with it. On other proof-of-stake chains, staking is kind of the default because, well, what else are you going to do? And that's not necessarily a discouragement. It's just kind of how it is. And on the flip side, you can say that for Ethereum, we are quite new to proof-of-stake, right? There's been other chains out there operating on a proof-of-stake system for much longer than Ethereum. And so in that sense, we're trying to figure out what this whole staking thing is about. It's actually quite interesting, the number of people who I know, who I talked to, or have talked to at ETH Denver, for example, who say they're involved in the Ethereum ecosystem. And they are. They don't really know how staking works. They certainly don't know what is happening with ETH withdrawals, with Shanghai. They may have understood the merge, probably not. So I think, and Rocketpool could play a part here too, there's a lot more education that needs to be done about what ETH staking means. It will likely go higher. Liquid staking also provides an opportunity for people to stake, but still retain utility and use of their ETH. So that's an option. To directly answer your question, I would say it's not going to get as high as other protocols. Would it get to 50%? I feel like maybe around there. At the same time, five years, that's a long way away. Certainly in this industry, a week feels like a month, and a month feels like a year. I would be very confident with that answer. But I would say, yeah, not as much as some others, but there's a lot of growth still to come. Some of the growth may be from specific sectors. We're looking at institutions, for example, as one area where there's quite significant growth potential. Right now, not being able to withdraw ETH, it makes it hard to invest more. There's an investment opportunity in terms of compliance and risk management. But once that is out of the way, we may see some funds, some financial entities dumping a lot of ETH into the proof-of-stake system. So that will be interesting to watch happen. I think the next couple, two, three months are going to be quite a significant shift in terms of the staking environments for ETH. Yeah, definitely. I also personally believe that when it comes to institutions, ETH is probably one of the only assets that generates a net positive return or net of inflation with no risk of counterparty default. So that's certainly something that has to spark some brains in these boardrooms as to how they can diversify risk and diversify portfolios. What better way than with an asset with no counterparty risk of default? So let's see how high that number gets. We're four minutes left. I also want to open up the microphone if anyone has questions for Rocketpool or for Dali and myself on the exponential side. While we're waiting for that, I'll just quickly say that we're looking past this Atlas upgrade to what we could do later on and whether there's any potential to push an upgrade to Rocketpool that will make it easier for some of these institutions to run nodes with Rocketpool. Again, going back to that risk management and compliance side, maybe liquid staking or maybe running a solo node is the preferred choice for some institutions, but we want to make sure that Rocketpool remains a viable option. At the end of the day, we are fully commissionless and we want to see the complete cross-section of the industry involved with Rocketpool when it comes to large institutions, people at home with just one 8x validator. They're all rewarded. It's important that everyone plays their part. So yeah, the institutional space is one that's quite interesting for sure. All right. Seems no questions. That means your explanation was pretty clear, Maverick. Again, thanks for jumping in at the last minute of the 11th hour. Also, again, thanks, Darren, for the time. I think this wraps it up. Again, thank you for your time. Hey, thanks for hosting. It was a great chat and thanks to everyone listening in. Hopefully everyone learned something. If you do have maybe more questions and answers after what I've said, there will certainly be someone in the Rocketpool Discord ready to help you out. But yeah, thanks again, guys. Great chat. Thank you. Thanks, everyone.