What is Rocket Pool?
RocketPool (RPL) is a decentralized Ethereum Proof of Stake (PoS) infrastructure service designed to be highly decentralized, distributed, and Ethereum 2.0 compatible. Rocket Pool Network is a "plug and play" soution for individuals, businesses, decentarlized applications (DApps), wallet providers, Software as a Service (SaaS) providers, exchanges, and other decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms to provide users the ability to earn staking rewards on their ETH holdings without maintaining an extensive staking infrastructure. When depositing ETH into Rocket Pool smart contracts, users are instantly issued rETH token to represent a tokenised staking deposit in the network. Users can hold rETH for any duration, or choose to sell or trade rETH as its value is reflected by the work each decentralized node operator provides to the Rocket Pool network. Rocket Pool aligns the interest of Stakers and Node Operators. Stakers are individuals or users from API integrated businesses who deposit ETH to be automatically assigned to Node Operators for staking, receiving rETH to represent their deposit. Node Operators are responsible for maintaining the Rocket Pool network infrastructure, running a smart node software stack including ETH1 client, ETH2 client, and Rocket Pool client to coordinate network activity. Rocket Pool is composed of three primary elements: Smart Contracts, Smart Nodes, and Minipool Validators, integrated to form a global ETH2 staking network that reduces staking risk by distributing deposits across multiple nodes. Users can choose to stake protocol native ERC-20 token RPL on a Rocket Pool node to provide the network with additional security. Node operators who stake RPL on their node earn additional commission from the network proportional to the size of their security deposit. In the future, a Rocket Pool DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) will be formed to help govern important aspects of the protocol including smart contract upgrades and other network changes.
