Well what a year its been! From bull markets, to bear markets; from Casper 0.2.0 as a contract, to Casper as part of Serenity; from Rocket Pool alpha, to actual beta release; from Rocket Pool 1.0, to Rocket Pool 2.0; from working as a solo project venture to working with ConsenSys Ventures… phew!

It’s been an adventurous year no doubt, one that’s seen Rocket Pool grow from alpha release to beta release and in turn growing the team in step. With only a week or so left in the year, we thought it’d be time for an overview of what development work Rocket Pool has made lately since our last announcement article that covered our design for a decentralised staking network with Rocket Pool 2.0.

Not only have we been busy working away on Rocket Pool 2.0, we’ve also been doing a bit of travelling spreading the good word, most notably of which was Devcon4 in Prague, so we’ll spend a short bit giving our insights on that too since it is THE event for Ethereum developers.

Rocket Pool — Wait, what, who?

If you’re not familiar with Rocket Pool, here’s a quick run-down before we get into the details of the development update.

Rocket Pool is a next-generation Ethereum proof of stake (PoS) infrastructure service, designed to be highly decentralised, distributed and compatible with Casper 2.0, the new consensus protocol that Ethereum will transition to in late 2019.

We offer any user, business, corporation, pool, wallet provider, exchange, hedge fund — just about any service — the ability to provide their users with the option to earn interest on their ether holdings for a fixed term without worrying about maintaining an extensive staking infrastructure, just plug and play.

Rocket Pool has a long history in Ethereum and work on it originally began in late 2016 after the Mauve paper was released by Vitalik Buterin. This provided an early functional spec for Ethereum’s new consensus protocol called Casper which would allow users to earn interest on a deposit of Ether. Since then, Rocket Pool has grown and evolved into a next-generation staking network, aiming to allow businesses and their users to earn interest on their ether and to empower users who wish to stake on their own node by providing them with additional income on top of interest awarded by Casper.

Rocket Pool isn’t just a whitepaper, it’s actual code. Be sure to read the Rocket Pool 101 — FAQ for more information.