Rocket Pool - CTO David Rugendyke | Meet the Nation

Transcript

the bankless state in the nations are brought to you by wire wiring is defy's first self-building community run project which i just get really really excited about iron is a system that seeks out yield in d5 and it does that in a number of different ways a very aggressive way is with the vaults where you can deposit your preferred asset of choice and different defy experts will come in and generate a strategy for what to do with your deposited token right and so it'll go find ways to get yield in that deposited token in d5 for those who want to just earn yield on their stable coins the urn system is for you where you can deposit your preferred stable coin and wiring will go and figure out which money market on d5 and d5 is producing the best interest rate

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compound and accessing yield uh but you can and you can also swap through uniswap what was cool with monolith is that they will send you a very sexy monolith visa card that connects to your smart monolith smart contract wallet on ethereum so it's a really awesome tool to live a bankless life with a a savings account that gets software updates so this is something that you're never going to find out in the real world but you can still do real world things with you know real money and like buy your groceries so that's just fantastic coming soon to monolith actually already here to monolith is now you can buy die and get it sent to your wallet directly right so it's also being an on-ramp so you don't have to go through your centralized

exchange like coinbase or gemini or wherever you can just go straight from your bank account right into your monolith checking account smart contract wallet so check them out at monolith.xyz welcome bankless nation i have david rudenbike here from rocketpool david welcome to the nation hey good morning uh good afternoon yes happy to be here thank you for uh having me on yeah so david rocket pool is an interesting project that has a very uh strong connection with ethereum itself right which kind of to me sets it apart from most other projects because it has a relationship with like the core protocol so david can you kind of give the

the pitch of what what's the problem that rocket pool is trying to solve and what are its goals um well it actually solves a couple of problems so probably the most significant one is obviously the barrier to entry for stake in ethereum i mean 32 8 is no short amount of money for any one person i mean and you know continuing a theory of success that will obviously increase as well so that's going to make it harder for in the future so um yeah obviously being a mistake with less than 32 it's a pretty key component especially for the ecosystem's health i mean we want as many people kind of contributing to you know the staking process because it's obviously you know consensus mechanism for the new theorem 2.0 so security is a big factor there um and also um the ability to stake without

running a node so that's kind of what ties into our ra token which is a tokenized staking a stacking token uh which you can basically hold and it gains rewards over time so that's probably the the two main barriers to entry which is yeah it really will stop a lot of people now and in the future so that's kind of what we're trying to get on top of uh and also um making sure that rocketpool directly contributes to the the health of the ethereum ecosystem so obviously we're aiming to be a decentralized staking network many different node operators obviously contributing towards uh the network security so you know rather than just being a central staking as a service provider or something like that where everything's kind of held in one place um the rockport network is designed to be very decentralized and um

yeah basically basically without rh token system two if you sell your r8 your eight is actually still locked in rock pool uh contributing to the security of the system anyway so yeah there's a couple different facets we're kind of taking on there so it sounds like you guys are trying to solve decentralization in two spec specific vectors decentralization in uh enabling more people to be uh able to stake to ethereum right by reducing the threshold of the amount of ether that is needed to be owned by one particular individual you know people you know three three plus people with uh you know 10 12 eth can all come together and stay together or even an even wider network and right so it as far as

the security of the network goes decentralization is expanded when you can have more participants so that's that's one of the goals and then the other goal is enabling more staking nodes at the same time right and so you know people have to have a computer where they stake their eth and that's how the network runs and if many more people are staking their ether then the network is proliferated widely but a lot of people don't want to stake at home right that there's yeah you know sometimes computers can be confusing and especially running a blockchain and so that also needs to be decentralized and still needs to be done by people so this seems to be tackling two vectors of decentralization in two different ways kind of with the same problem which i

think is kind of elegant yeah i mean rockpool essentially aligns the interest of two different user groups so you have those users that they want to stake without running a node like you just said because it it can be hard i mean we're running our beta right now it's been going for about a week and uh we get a lot of feedback a lot of different questions on how to set up your node you have security and it's pretty obvious it's um a bit of a task for some people so this is obviously a kind of pretty significant barrier to entry if if you need to run a node you need to do it well because you obviously incur penalties for downtime not significant penalties but uh you still you still will lose rewards um so yeah basically kind of overcoming those barriers uh through different ways is um

yeah rockpool is kind of uniquely a position where we're not a really direct competitor to any staking as a service provider because these guys can actually run nodes in the rocketpool network and you know contribute towards the the health of the ecosystem and also um mistake their own needs at the same time and basically yeah enable users to stack with um by just holding a token so that that's probably our two main facets we're going for fantastic now now tell me a little bit about the beginnings of rocket pool like how did this whole effort come about yeah okay so um we're actually probably one of the ogs in the sector well i'm going back so uh the original uh the original thought for rockapool first occurred back uh kind of around the

the doubt the original doubt it kind of imploded and resulted in the hard fork so this is going back to about mid 2016 over four years ago now um so yeah obviously back then um ethereum two staking was looking to be a smart contract not this new bacon chain that we have today it was a different base back then so rocketpool was basically designed to actually start designing rocketpool at my old job we didn't have a load on at the time so i kind of put my downtime to good use and um yeah kind of built out an alpha version of rocketpool and then released that mid 2017. um yeah and that that got a really good reception and we basically started the journey from there obviously mid 2017 was the start of the um the uh

ico b was a token sales uh craze so that kind of catapulted the idea from then on and yeah we've been at it ever since so uh yeah well luckily um our first beta that actually was released with 2018 came out the same week that they announced their pivoting to their beacon chain timing was i wish they might have given us a little bit of a heads up on that one i mean all the core concepts still carried over really well we just obviously had to pivot a few things to work with this new beacon chain approach um it wasn't did you guys still run the test night yeah we did yeah and why not so if you've gotten that far to get it you

know to get a working product people can try out so um it was the only time the existing proof of stake uh casper smart contract was actually ever used so that the euro foundation had been working on this for quite some time and um yeah so you know staking in ethereum too did actually happen to little people's knowledge it only happened on our beta so yeah wow that that is one of the funnier stories i've heard about ethereum okay so yeah on that note uh you know ethereum uh was you know presumed to go to proof of stake you know way earlier which is kind of why you guys have such a such a big like history uh and so what's it what's it been like having to

just follow ethereum in development and and just wait kind of wait for it to get to where it needs to be so this product can be live like how you guys have had a team like how has how has all of people all the people like been able to stay focused when it's been such a long thing has there been work to do every step of the way um yeah so actually we kind of operated until about six months ago we were operating under a kind of a different model so we had this rocker pool 2.0 thing which is basically our existing version where we switched from the smart contract uh proof of stake network to this new beacon chain one so we call that roku pool 2.0 and that was that was in a pretty good place around uh january february towards the beginning

um but then we also came up with this kind of new uh tokenized staking approach and that that changed pretty much every facet of rockpool so we basically had to go back uh revisit a lot of our smart contracts in fact we rewrote them from the ground up and actually removed about 40 smart contracts due to this new kind of mechanic uh it just simplified things so much it was just one of those moments where the penny kind of drops and you're like yep this is this is the way we've got to do it so we probably put pencils down went back to the smart contracts rewrote them from the ground up we wrote our notes software from the ground up and basically did all this in the last four to five months so last four or five months has actually been really busy just because we had that

massive change and you know infinitely for the better so um and also working with um their latest clients the the clients that come out because we do allow if you run a node in rocketpool we actually have a thing called a smart node stack which you can install and it allows you to choose your eth182 client and our goal is to kind of make sure that as many e2 clients uh the stable ones can be represented in our stack as possible so um working with these clients are these kinds of leading edge software i mean their stuff changes weekly bug fixes come out weekly so just making sure that they still integrate with our our own client correctly is a big challenge and that that's that's a weekly one that we face so um we just put out a beta update uh

a day ago and found a breaking change that made it into uh the beta update uh for the way that um no uh the way the key stores are handled in one client so uh yeah so it's just stuff like that i mean it's a constant ongoing it's bullying edge so you you have to create launches anyway yeah that's pretty cool you're like the first party i've heard of that has had to like tap into every single client and understand them from a technical level i'm not even sure like each client does that um themselves yeah exactly so with the rock pool kind of network we have we have our own client which kind of handles interactions with our smart contracts uh you know and things like that as well and we also have a middleware uh client which basically interprets requests from

our client into whichever uh ftf2 client needs to it needs to go to so if someone selected lighthouse um this middleware layer will basically interpret request from rocketpool um to the client the way it can actually read it so because there i mean there is standards built into the ethereum two clients at the moment and they haven't always followed them and that some some uh some have the full standard some don't so we're just gonna have to build this middleware layer until the stands kind of become a bit more mature and that'll take some time i mean this is plenty of stuff so we don't expect them to have this stuff you know nailed down on day one and that's okay so we've come up with a way to kind of handle that eloquently fantastic all right so let's go into the actual construction of the rocket pool

network so uh the rocket pool again is solving two problems many people who want to stake collectively and many nodes that want to operate and estate those funds right and so let's start with the nodes so is or if that if that is the right place to start um yeah yeah yeah okay so let's start with the notes uh say i have a computer and i want to participate in rocket pool staking like how do i tap into the rocket pool network and like signal that i am interested in staking the funds from rocket pool yep okay so firstly um if you do want to run a node within rocketpool you only need 16 eighths per validate and not 32.

so that's obviously another um kind of reduction in barriers do you have to stick at all can you can you just operate as a node or do you have to have 168. unfortunately unfortunately not because if we didn't make sure the reason why we required we could actually call them bonded validators so they have a 16 um validation uh 16th of their own which they bring they can stack that fee free in the network so we don't charge them anything for staking their own other for free so um let's say you had 32 with um and you could run your own node solo um or you can bring that into rocket pool split that up into 216 validators and you actually get a higher return after doing that as well so and that's and i'm assuming that's how you guys achieve trustlessness right you're using that

that 50 stake as a mechanism to ensure that this individual does things honestly the way they should behave yes that's their collateral i'm assuming it can be slashed therefore as well that's right so yeah yeah what we call this economically bonded so that's essentially if they hurt the network they hurt themselves just as much and if they behave they have you know the most to gain because they get a higher return they can stay in that stack they're only fee free uh but yes we do have insurance mechanisms built into the network so um let's say a node operator comes in uh that they stake 16 in their own uh 16th from uh the front end of rockefeller which just uses receiving r8 uh you know

to get no pressure state for them uh so this 16th chunk comes from the network to a node operator they then have 32e16 from the network 16 of their own uh this obviously makes sure that they behave or they hurt themselves just as much uh so they then state this and let's say they're a really terrible node operator you know they go away on vacation somewhere they know it goes offline after two weeks they basically get ejected out of their their ethereum two system uh and let's say they finish with you know say like 18 or something like they start off with 32 finish with 18 that's really terrible result uh fortunately for the network um we have built in our smart contracts where if you're a node operator you obviously have the most to gain i mean you get fee free staking and a big return but if you're a really

terrible node operating you finish with less than 32 but greater than 16e in that case from your original 168 deposit the missing is actually sourced from there for the network so the network doesn't gain anything by you being a terrible node operator but it also doesn't lose anything so the node operate has as much to gain but more to lose if they're really really terrible okay that's that's a really elegant and simple design um okay so let's go to the other half of the equation where yeah i'm an individual who i have eight eth and i need help from from other people that have eight or more eth uh to stake how does this work okay so if you have eight it depends if you want to run a note so if you have 88 and you don't want to run

a note uh you can just send it to our smart contracts in about two clicks and you'll have r8 which is basically a you know a tokenized stake uh you can basically hold on to this for as long as you want and it will gain stake rewards over time minus the the commissions that are paid to the node operators who are staking this for the network so that's beyond the simplest way to do that if you just have 80 uh if you have ad and you want to be a node operator this is slightly tricky you probably have to team up with someone else who has 18 and then get someone to run that node in the network so that is that an explicit function that you guys are working on or is that just like something that someone can do um for the re code or for say for for

like two people with eight together who wants okay is that is that like something that you guys think about or is that kind of just like a an edge case that that is something we can think about so obviously in 80th in the future or even 16th could be worth a lot so that may even be bigger barriers than free for node operators in the network um luckily we do kind of have incentives for node operators to make sure that they are well compensated i mean if they do have to pony up 16 eggs and that is a lot in the future um they will still get a pretty significant return by operating in rockable first operating out of it based on uh i'll just give a very quick overview on how we kind of reward node operators so yeah yeah go into the feed dynamics

yeah yeah so rocketpool works of supply and demand mechanics so we do try to keep things as simple as possible much of the time so if there's a lot of aids coming in the front end from people who are depositing in smart contracts and receiving ahri um let's say that there's a big backlog uh you know like a couple of thousand eight uh waiting to be assigned to node operators but not many node operators are kind of coming to the table meeting the demand in that case we have a dynamic commission ratio which adjusts to kind of incentivize no orders to join so if there's a lot of supply i mean there's a lot of demand but little supply on the note operator side then the commission for staking this uh goes up so obviously it goes up considerably uh if there's a lot of

demand but not much supply so is that fixed um yeah we have caps on that at the moment so this is something that we're actually going to kind of kind of model out originally so for the beta we have a cap of a minimum of two percent um to the node operators and maximum twenty percent of the reward boards but but can it fluctuate over time because you're saying incentivizing people when there is high demand for staking but low supply those stakers can be paid more how long does that last how long does that that bonus last okay so this is why it's a very attractive thing for a node operator so that that bonus lasts as long as the node press stakes settings so wow that's that's a very attractive i mean this is why because it's obviously a lot more work to be

known to operate at first it is to be you know just receive a token for staking so we need these guys to kind of be active and proactive at staking this ever so that's a really desirable kind of uh commission so if you can earn a commission say at the maximum 20 percent of the rewards earn on that bit you know sixteen eighth chunk of that that that node operator is staking they can stake that for years at a time if they want so that that is a very very attractive proposition and it needs to be yeah yeah and where do those those returns come from so do they all do does it is the the fees being paid to this individual that like scored with high at that just like got it at the right moment right like like locked in a really advantageous like

rate who's paying that is it it's not any one particular individual it's the network right it's it's the collector yeah so it's the collective of re told us which are essentially paying that so all right it's just that tokenized staking uh or take a not staking token which you hold so the rate that it gains rewards is affected by how much commission is being paid to node operators because that comes out of the rewards that that's taking that effort that is earned so i mean if everyone's staking let's say the maximum is at 20 and it's at that for a really long time um it will just very smoothly kind of slow down the amount of rewards that are ethically because a lot of commission is being paid to the node

operators who are staking on behalf of our holders but it could not never go above that right like they're the the are the the stakers who are have locked in a really good interest rate could never actually pull out more from the system than the system's actually collecting no that's it so okay i mean they get 20 percent so that commission rate is actually comes out of their own efforts as well so if you get if you get a really high commission block say 20 um and you're really bad note operating you only finish with you know like say one eighth in profit you only get twenty percent of the rewards earned on that one eight so okay uh they they are very much motivated to perform as well if they do get a high commission block okay cool all right and then the other side

of this dynamic is that there is a high supply of stakers and not much people demanding staking what happens in this environment yeah in this environment okay so the the commission rate obviously goes down because there's a lot of supply you know not much demand um so basically so basically in that case it's obviously very very much um on the on the network as a whole to kind of lower this rate to attract stakers that want to deposit and basically capitalize on a small commission that's being paid to node operators currently so that that would make up getting r8 at that time more valuable because it you know not as much commission is being paid to node operators so um yeah as a collective of ra holders uh your best bet would be to

get it while the commissions are low because it increases its rewards uh quicker at that time so um yeah it's basically just supplying the main mechanics okay so let's go into how the how the tokens work so our our eth is a is a claim on ether that's being staked right so it's kind of like c dye in the compound version where the compound has like its interest baked into the dye token and then they make the c die and you guys have our east for rocket pool eats is there anything different about that model or those like pretty much one to one c dice yeah c guy is actually quite similar so if it basically um the thing with r8 is it's the rate that it recruit increases supports depends on an entire decentralized network of uh anonymous node operator so it is a little bit

different in that regard but um yeah very conceptually uh similar it will obviously increase in value over time so what you'll have you'll have a static amount so this is kind of the way right works from distribution point of view so um if you get in on say day one of rockpool opening and you deposit and you've got some my rate uh you came back a week later deposited the same amount you get a smaller amount the second time you deposited even though you're depositing the same amount and that's kind of one way that it increases in value over time is uh you get less and less and less uh the longer rock board runs so that's kind of the way that works um and it gets it gets less and less what's the mechanism that is or the oracle that is providing the information to how much

less that amount should be okay that's that's a really good question uh we actually have two types of nodes in the rokform network so we have uh bonded nodes these are the nodes that you know the ones we've been talking about the one that need to pony up 168 they can be anywhere anyone um and we also have trusted nodes now trusted nodes are nodes that act as oracles in the rockball network they carry a few extra duties obviously they need to report back validated balances from the f2 chain to the f1 chain because there is no bridge between that yet so uh that's a gap so our aim is basically to bootstrap the rocketpool network um with a bunch of different trusted node providers from you know ourselves um you know other uh interested parties such as consensus and

any big d5 kind of um adapt that wants to plug into rockpool um you know at least a dozen or so very kind of high profile uh public figures that basically want to run these trusted nodes so uh these trusted nodes under our tokenomics also uh receive rpl which is our native platform token uh for providing the service as well so it's actually a it's a paid position to perform oracle duties for the network and um the way we kind of guarantee that the data being relayed back from it to eth1 is that all these nodes need to agree or at least 50 of these nodes sorry need to agree on data being pulled back so um that's kind of a really good way to have a decentralized trust and no network

operating within rocketpoor uh is to do that because it makes make sure one party can't really cheat the system and say you know my validator you know 600 in the last uh session so um that that protects against that um pretty much so yeah that's that's a really good question that's that's pretty much how we're handling it at this point okay so that's like kind of the frontier of develop development for you guys is that yeah implied yeah so that that's that's a very bleeding edge kind of stuff as well for us um because once there is kind of once sharding comes into place and a few other um these things um are potentially more connected you know we might be able to to do away with some of these oracle duties but not for a few years at least because there's that big

uh gap in the rollout of the phases of ethereum 2.0 so right uh yeah they will be needed for for some time and is that kind of the main role and function of the rpl token or does the rpl token do other things as well we actually have done some really big changes to our tokenomics uh just recently so uh we have fireeyes which is a group that uh did ava's tokenomics recently we've been working with them for the last three months to kind of come up with ways to uh incentivize users to obviously participate in rook ball and also to protect against slashing conditions so that's something we didn't touch on earlier we touched on penalties where they finish with less than 32 8 but greater than 16 but under that scenario if your deposit is

wiped out you know the network can't be compensated because there's no evidence to give the network um once that node operator has been slashed so this is a change we've actually only just announced like uh a week ago uh is these new tokenomics where you can essentially collateralize your node with rpl and this goes into basically an insurance pool for the network uh the more the more you collateralize your node with rpl uh will will affect um you're not receiving you know better commission chunks over other nodes so basically you're guaranteeing the network you um you have more insurance um for the network so if you get slash your rpl will be automatically uh sold on the market that ever will then be given back

to the network uh to replace the missing e so uh these people which are actually putting up this insurance uh through rpl will get rewarded uh through native rpl being distributed uh through our token as well and same as the trusted note providers so um it's it's a really kind of interesting dynamic now where if you stack with rockpool in a decentralized network you can get either on your own on your own staking and you can also earn rpl which will be used for decentralized governance uh shortly into the future which is something else we've um just recently announced as well okay well let's go right into that tell us about the governance over over the system what what are the most important things that need to be governed over ah excellent um so we actually did touch

on this um not too long ago actually well so it's been a it's been a really fruitful discussion um the the commission rates so obviously the minimum and maximum commission rates which assigned to node operators these need a human interaction so it's not something you can gauge uh you can't just let this hit 100 commission or anything like that so because obviously our rate orders would just abandon the token because they wouldn't be getting any rewards so we need sensible minimum and maximums based on how the network is currently doing and currently we we will mostly be doing that in the in the early phases as we watch the content network mature but our long-term goal is to hand over rockpool uh to the community uh in a down fashion so

the dow fashion will be will vote on certain mechanics such as the minimum maximum commission rates based on how the network is currently doing so it won't just be us making a calls it would be basically any rpl holder uh or anyone with a node operator that staking rpl will be able to kind of contribute towards this um this vote and that's a that's a really good way to ensure vested interests are paying attention to the network because if you're a node operating rock ball you you will be paying attention because you know your your income depends on it and even more something like staking yourself outside of this yeah even more than that right yeah exactly so you have a vested interest in the health of the network as well as your own node at that point so you would be very kind of compelled to

make sure uh you know there's sensible minimum maximums because it directly affects your bottom line so that that's a that's a really good way to ensure that our node operators um are rewarded for basically you know you know being part of rocketpool through getting rpl but they also make sensible decisions based on behalf of the network zapper is this new tool that i use to check out all of my assets in defy as you guys have known defy has absolutely exploded recently and so managing your assets is getting harder and harder because there's so many different places and so many different assets that it could be so i'm going to put my ethereum address in here and zapper is going to tell me where all of my assets are across ethereum right so uh here are all of the assets in this wallet uh there's

there's a decent amount of them and it's also going to tell me where i've deposited assets into various d5 protocols right so there's some yield farming going on there's some liquidity pooling going on we can also look more granularly at the specific protocols that it's involved with in this explore feature so it's got some assets deposited into uniswap it's got some assets deposited into balancer and also with zapper you can just exchange straight from the zapper interface right so this is just another layer on top of unit swap or other exchanges on ethereum that allow you to swap assets right so check them out at zapper.fi it'll give you a nice clean portal to invest your assets in defy and you can also connect to multiple wallets if you use multiple

wallets all at once and it'll give you an aggregate of every single wallet that you own check them out at zapper.fi also this is definitely not my wallet unstoppable domains is helping the world become censorship resistant and permissionless if you are looking for a censorship resistant website that no one can take down go to unstoppabledomains.com and type in the domain that you think that you want so i'm going to type in the domain that i think that i want trustless date and it's going to tell me some of the options that i can get to get a permissionless domain trustastate.crypto and so what you can do with trustlessdate.crypto or whatever domain that you want is you can you can purchase it and then it can be a url that you direct people to that no nation

state can take down that's what unstoppable domains is all about what's also really helpful with unstoppable domains is that wallets can integrate unstoppable domains so that the addresses that you send your crypto assets to can become human readable and this doesn't work for just ethereum you also can do this for bitcoin or litecoin or any blockchain at all where wallets can resolve to your human readable name so you can tell bitcoiners to send you bitcoin to trustlessdate.crypto or yourname here.eth check them out at unstoppabledomain.com so david is it well before i move on is there any other like kind of component to the architecture of rocketpool that we haven't yet touched on uh

i think that was a pretty official run through yeah i know oh yeah yeah i can do this in my sleep at this point um yeah i think i from top of my head uh no we covered trust nodes bonded nodes become stages already told us rpl i think we're doing pretty good that's pretty good okay so i have i have one last question for you then so there is a bunch of staking as a service companies like buy some trails um you know some other ones uh staked for example where like they they uh they offer more or less the same service but it's it's kind of like the block fly model or like the centralized model where you know they just have a big computer and there's this one computer uh and you know and there was somebody who wrote i think it

was dan ellipser who wrote a piece that uh talked about how centralization around staking as a service companies is going to come as a result of the token that is inevitably going to be issued by these staking as a service companies from people that stick their ether right and so like say coindesk spend or not coindesk a coinbase spins up at staking as a service company and says you know hey you can you know deposit your ether with us you will receive this coindesk ether and the author of this article i'm pretty sure was dan said that you know people that uh because people are going to inevitably use these things because they are capital efficient uh it's all going to converge into one you know

centralized staking as a service company uh and that's bad because that's centralization like like do you have an opinion on how this might go or what should happen instead um well um ours is especially the decentralized version of that which is beautiful because um ari is backed by a decentralized network of node operators and these node operators can't be seeking as a service providers in fact it's in their best interest to join the rockpool network because if they already have an ample supply of eight they need a stake they can increase their return for their own clients by writing rocket pool notes so this is actually i've i talked to a number of securities service providers over the last year i still talk to them on quite a regular basis we actually have a few of them participating in our beta right now and you know

like i said earlier we're kind of not a direct compared to anyone but we managed to kind of serve stakers and node operators at the same time uh even second service providers which some might view us as a competitor too but they they they can join the network and do that for themselves and they would outside of it so i can't see how that's really being a direct competitor but you know these guys also might be running trusted notes in the future which we did uh touch on because these guys are professionals at what they do and we do want professionals running trusted nodes um so yeah bootstrapping network with a bunch of high profile staking service providers uh as well as you know groups like rook pool consensus yeah a few other

vpr names in the industry is something we are aiming to do and um we still talking to these guys at this point and um i won't name which ones but some pretty big ones that would be actually participating in rock and pool fantastic yeah i think that's a really interesting component of this story of ethereum and that i don't think many people discuss uh are you familiar with the protocol sync thesis i i'm not no okay so that yeah this is a thesis that me and ryan like kind of chew on and spit out together uh and so the protocol synthesis is the belief that uh protocols on ethereum d5 protocols of any sort you know borrowing and landing applications like compound or you know whatever you would call like make or dial like a bank or whatever

they are they are d5 versions of their like real life correlates right except the d5 versions have these features or characteristics that are attractive for companies to build on top of in in lieu of not actually wanting to build with a different company right and so both coinbase and binance can seek to provide their customers returns on their assets by leveraging device protocols right but no no exchange would either let would leverage each of it no exchange would leverage each other because that's your competitor right but people aren't competitors with protocols that's not how protocols work they are like they're they are credibly neutral they are permissionless they're

trustless and so the protocol sync thesis is that things that are protocols sink down to the bottom of the centralized companies and so the camp the companies end up building on top of the decentralized protocols and use them as utilities that seems to be what you seem to be describing to me as well that's that's exactly it so that's kind of the way we model rocket pool uh with r8 as well so aries uh getting a token of stakes we wanted this to be incredibly simple and i i think we've really accomplished that with this at the moment so if you if you have eight and you send it to a cool smart contract you receive re uh in the same transaction so that's it it's one transaction and you have a stake in turkey so imagine the d5 world imagine

decentralized exchanges uh that won't previously be able to offer staking forever they might hold they can now do that with a decentralized staking network which wasn't possible uh before because it must compute a decentralized exchange you can't trust a centralized provider to provide staking searches and services for decentralized it just won't happen so now there's um these smart contract based apps can basically build on top of rocketball and offer stacking so that's kind of the route that we're going to be basically a base application after staking and have things built on top of us so that's kind of the angle we're going for awesome well david you guys are on a mission that is could not be more aligned with

ethereum and the bankless nation so we thank you for coming on to the the meet the nation in order to to meet the nation right that was an absolute pleasure we covered a lot of ground so yeah that was that was really good okay so if people want to learn more and or people want to join the rocket pool community where should they go um actually you can all try out our beta right now we have one that started a week ago or just over a week ago at uh beta.rockerpool.net and it in its first week it now has i think over 140 000 other states in it so there's a lot there's a lot of node operators we have a network map you can click on you can see basically all the countries competing all the regions competing against each other i think europe and uh north america are

currently almost neck and neck for who's staking the most it kind of it kind of gives you a really good visual overlay of uh rocker pool network and yes decent that's actually really cool wow that's a great visual visualization i'd love to see that on twitter one day i'm sure i'm sure it'll get there yeah yeah all right dabel thanks for coming on i appreciate your time my pleasure mate yeah thank you very much