It’s been two busy months since launch, and the Rocket Pool Beta has finally come to a close, after running at capacity for almost its entire lifespan! It has been incredibly exciting putting our work out into the world, and watching the Rocket Pool community engage with the beta and put it though its paces. A huge thank you to everyone who participated and provided us with a tonne of valuable feedback!

Now onto the meat and potatoes:

The Stats

First up, how did Rocket Pool perform after its first steps into the wild? Here’s a look at some statistics over the course of the beta:

Participation

287 unique addresses withdrew Ether from our testnet faucet

unique addresses withdrew Ether from our testnet faucet 203 unique addresses made deposits into the Rocket Pool network

Deposits & Withdrawals

1037 withdrawals were made from the testnet faucet

withdrawals were made from the testnet faucet 12,014 Ether was withdrawn from the faucet in total

Ether was withdrawn from the faucet in total 1774 deposits were made into the Rocket Pool network

deposits were made into the Rocket Pool network 18,385 Ether was deposited in total

Ether was deposited in total 931 withdrawals of Ether were made

withdrawals of Ether were made 18,011 Ether was withdrawn in total

Ether was withdrawn in total 81 withdrawals of RPD were made

withdrawals of RPD were made 1,016 Ether worth of RPD was withdrawn in total

Ether worth of RPD was withdrawn in total 49 exchanges of RPD for Ether were made

exchanges of RPD for Ether were made 889 Ether was exchanged back to users in total

Minipools

503 minipools were created

Smart Nodes

71,547 checkins were performed by smart nodes

Casper

497 deposits were made to Casper

deposits were made to Casper 18,263 Ether was deposited in total

Ether was deposited in total 478 withdrawals were made from Casper

withdrawals were made from Casper 19,352 Ether was withdrawn in total

Odds & Ends

227 Ether remains in the Rocket Deposit Token contract for exchange

Ether remains in the Rocket Deposit Token contract for exchange 724 Ether is still staking with Casper

Ether is still staking with Casper 235 Ether is still awaiting withdrawal by users

That’s quite a lot to unpack! Let’s go over the highlights one by one for a more detailed analysis.

First of all, it appears that about 40% more addresses withdrew from the faucet than made deposits! While a few people may not have been able to deposit early on due to high demand, the biggest contributor here is that many users withdrew from the faucet using multiple accounts, then consolidated their testnet Ether under a single one. People will take all the free money they can get, even if it’s fake!

Secondly, about 6000 more Ether was deposited into the Rocket Pool network than was withdrawn from the faucet. How is this possible? This shows that a core group of enthusiastic (and very helpful) users were putting their rewards earned back into the network to keep stacking up the interest.

Another insight is that almost 90% of RPD withdrawn was cashed in for Ether later on. This indicates that overall, there was sufficient liquidity in the network to support frequent exchanges.

Finally, the most important part — how much Ether did we all make?? If we add up all of the Ether withdrawn, the RPD exchanges, the Ether still staking and awaiting withdrawal, and what’s left in the RPD contract, we get a cool 20,085 Ether. That’s about 9% over the total amount which was deposited, so the community saw a 9% gain overall! Of course, the interest paid out by the real Casper once it hits the mainnet may be different — we’ll need to wait and see what its reward structure looks like closer to release.

Issues and Patches

We saw a lot of chatter in the #beta channel of our discord group, with a number of bug reports and a tonne of great suggestions for improvements! Here’s an overview of the patches we made over the beta period thanks to all your feedback:

Rocket Pool Network

Fixed a bug where penalties incurred were not allocated to all users correctly (in the case that a minipool had net penalties at withdrawal), preventing the last user from withdrawing

Fixed a bug where penalties incurred were not accounted for when sending Ether back to the Rocket Deposit Token contract (in the case that a minipool had net penalties at withdrawal), preventing the last user from withdrawing

Made internal optimisations to minipool sorting & filtering logic within the main Rocket Pool contract

Fixed a bug where users could assign their backup address to their current address within a minipool and prevent themselves from withdrawing

Beta Site UI

Fixed various rounding issues on numeric values

Made various copy updates

Fixed display issues on smaller screens

Improved deposit form styling to highlight important UI elements

Fixed network map node hovering glitches

Implemented availability alerts to inform users of minipool slot openings

Implemented “incorrect network” warning page for users on the mainnet

Improved beta site asset cache-busting

Improved transaction error handling to account for incorrect MetaMask behaviour

Implemented loading of old versions of upgraded Rocket Pool contracts

Improved contract event listeners to retrieve events from all previous versions of Rocket Pool contracts

Fixed network map nodes to display active minipool counts only

Improved main menu deposit & withdrawal item count labels

Fixed gas costs for transaction types based on maximum costs observed

Added South America region to network map

Fixed numeric input decimal value issues

Fixed notification list loading issues

Overall, we’re very happy with how the network and the beta site both performed. You helped us track down a few critical bugs in Rocket Pool contract code, which are always expected in early prototypes. The small number of issues uncovered has boosted our confidence in our extensive test suite, which has now been expanded to increase code coverage.

RPL Token Giveaway

As a thank you to everyone who participated in the beta, we’re giving away 5000 RPL split between all addresses which made deposits into the Rocket Pool network. If you’re eligible, you will need to manually claim your RPL via the beta site. We’ll have a five day grace period for everyone to make sure that their address has been listed, and then the claim period will begin on the 24th of September at midnight UTC.

You can check whether your address is eligible right now! First, make sure that the account you have selected in MetaMask is the one which you used to interact with the beta. Then, connect to the Ethereum main network and head over to the beta site. If you’re still on the Rocket Pool Beta test network, you will see a notice telling you that the beta is closed.

Oops! Time to switch back to the mainnet

Otherwise, you will see a notice letting you know whether you’re eligible or not. If you are, you’re all set. Just come back on the 24th of September to collect your reward!

Ready to roll on the 24th of September!

Note that because you’ll need to send a transaction to receive your RPL (and also to send them to another address), you will need a small amount of Ether in your MetaMask account to cover gas costs. You can send some Ether to this account from your primary one, and then move it back later once you’re done.

Once you’ve received your RPL tokens, here’s how to send them to your primary address:

Open MetaMask and click the menu icon, then select “Add Token”. Click “Custom Tokens” and enter the RPL contract address (0xb4efd85c19999d84251304bda99e90b92300bd93) in the “Token Address” field. The “Token Symbol” field should display “RPL”. Click “Next” and then “Add Tokens”. Click the menu icon again, and then switch from Ether to RPL. MetaMask will now display the RPL balance in your account. Click the “Send” button under your balance and follow the prompts to send your RPL to another address. You may adjust the gas price for a speedier transaction.

Adding the RPL token and sending tokens in MetaMask

Special Thanks

Finally, a special shout-out to some of our most active Beta users for all of their support finding issues and suggesting improvements — these everyday heroes from our discord group are:

@Matterhorn#1591

@nico9111#5507

@Slade51463#5968

@eskp#4233

@webs7er#9984

@Donk#1591

@Paolo#2255

@Noved#1361

@macsek#3729

Wrapping Up

That covers all of the news from the Rocket Pool Beta. We had a blast running it and seeing you all get involved, we hope you enjoyed the journey too! We’ll be back with an updated, streamlined build once the new version of Casper is further along.

Until then, why not swing by for a chat and say G’day! We have a Discord chat room anyone can join, so what are you waiting for? If chat rooms aren’t your thing, we’re also on Twitter!