Beta

Rocket Pool is currently towards a V1 beta release due in the next few months. This will be an initial release with a second V2 beta to follow some time after. More information on the various beta sections being worked on below.

Beta Validator Daemon

Single users that have a full online node and the 1,500 Ether requirement for staking with Casper, will easily be able to run a node client such as Geth or Parity when they implement their Validator service into their respective client and begin staking with Casper.

Rocket Pool though is developing it’s own Validator service that will run as part of our Smart Node daemon service that is required to run on all nodes in the Rocket Pool network. This is a custom service for pools that will allow single nodes to have multiple validators (Minipools) attached at once. It is currently being actively developed with all the Casper methods being implemented with the aim of proper testing in the upcoming beta of Rocket Pool.

Beta Casper Integration

Casper FFG is currently deployed to an Ethereum testnet and was done so around the beginning of the year. Currently this version of Casper has been difficult to connect to due to P2P networking issues with the Pythereum client released by the Ethereum Foundation and it is also quite outdated now due to a lot of changes to the Casper contract since then, particularly in the last two months.

To ensure Rocket Pool works with Casper correctly, we are currently developing direct integration of the latest copy of the Casper FFG contract into our unit tests and replacing our existing DummyCasper contract that only simulated inputs/outputs of Casper. This is an exciting change as it means we can now test Rocket Pool instantly with any version of Casper, long before it hits any public testnet to ensure it’s integrated correctly in our system. This is currently in progress and going well. So well in fact it actually allowed us to discover a bug in Casper that remained undetected until then and would have caused Casper to stall when deployed to any network that has been running for a while, such as mainnet. Hooray for unit testing!

Beta Rollout Plans

Currently we are working towards a V1 beta release of Rocket Pool due in the next few months. This will be an initial release with a second V2 beta to follow some time after.

V1 beta will most likely be limited to around 10 Minipools across 3 nodes. The Casper that is deployed with the beta will be an exact copy of the most up to date Casper contract, but have its parameters shortened to allow much quicker testing. It will be configured with the max ether required by Casper at just approximately 10 ether with the withdrawal time being 1 day instead of 4 months. This way we can allow a constant rotation of public testers while verifying the Minipool life cycle works as expected with Casper and that our smart nodes can handle staking for multiple Minipools (validators) at once correctly. The allowed staking times will also be shortened to accommodate this, with the staking times shortened to several available time lengths - 1 days, 3 days and 5 days respectively.

The Rocket Pool network will be deployed to either the Kovan or Rinkeby testnets, decision still pending.