The upgrades to the Ethereum Network has brought about a numerous different developments all around the crypto space. Starting from Polygon’s zkEVM launch to now the decentralized Ethereum-based staking service, Rocket Pool finally deploying its Atlas upgrade on Monday, April 17, 2023. The upgrade was launched with some architectural changes that will help make the platform more compatible with the Ethereum network, post its Shanghai Capella upgrade.
Read more about Ethereum Shanghai Upgrade
The flawless launch of Atlas has been a resounding success!
It marks a great step forward in Rocket Pool's mission to reduce barriers to entry for permissionless staking on Ethereum & contribute to its decentralisation
✅~28,000 new ETH staked
✅~1,000 new minipools launched— Rocket Pool (@Rocket_Pool) April 19, 2023
This recent upgrade from Rocket Pool allows immediate access to node operators to their staking rewards. Not only does the Atlas upgrade allows that, it also lowers the barrier of entry for the users to spin up an Ethereum validator, also referred to as a minipool, in the protocol’s parlance.
In short, instead of providing 16 ETH, the node operators can only have a supply of eight plus some RPL; which is the governance token of Rocket Pool, in order to form a minipool. This helps in reducing the amount of capital that is required to participate in the staking process of Ethereum.
As per the document shared by the Rocket Pool team, “Minipools with only 8 ETH bonded by their owning node operator are matched with 24 ETH from the staking pool (provided by rETH holders) in order to make a validator.” Some of the features that the Atlas upgrade is bringing on Rocket Pool are:
- Shapella and ETH Withdrawals
- The most anticipated introduction of the users needing to only provide 8 ETH in order to make a minipool instead of 16 ETH
- The ability of Rocket Pool after the upgrade to create a special minipool which will then become the withdrawal address for the existing solo validator.
As per the data collected from CoinGecko, in the six days, following the Shapella upgrade on Ethereum, the RPL price has rallied to almost 30%, which amounted to $55.37!
According to the date from DeFiLlama, the TVL or total value locked on Rocket Pool surged more than 20% to $1.47 billion during the same period. This surge made Rocket Pool the third-largest liquid staking entity, standing only after Lido and Coinbase.
Source: DeFiLlama
News Source: CoinDesk
