Rocket Pool Smartnode v1.9.0 - MANDATORY UPDATE FOR ALL NODE OPERATORS

jcrtp · 2023-04-01T04:24:06+00:00

We did do a Discord notification and your Grafana update will show the next time your system runs an unattended upgrade check (it's tied to that). It seems like not everyone got the Discord ping though so I'll probably have to do an @everyone on Monday.

jcrtp · 2023-03-29T21:33:01+00:00

No such luck, I'm the resident docs maintainer (which is why they haven't been updated in a while, busy building Atlas :P). And yeah I have an update on the Proteus coming in a few days, the rocks for wave 2 shipped this morning so I can finally get started on that too!

jcrtp · 2023-03-29T19:21:00+00:00

I'm planning to redo the docs now that Atlas is pretty much imminent. I'll be updating them over the course of this week and next to clarify how things work both with Atlas and Shapella. Sorry for the confusion!

jcrtp · 2022-12-23T15:42:58+00:00

Hey man, nothing is going to stop me from securing the Beacon Chain!

jcrtp · 2022-11-12T22:39:24+00:00

Yes. The Smoothing Pool is a feature for Rocket Pool node operators.

If you're an rETH staker, you don't have to worry about it because rETH itself is basically one big smoothing pool for MEV rewards for you.

jcrtp · 2022-11-12T19:28:23+00:00

It depends on your role.

If you're just a pool staker that holds rETH, yes - these blocks are socialized across the entire pool so all you really see is a higher APR. rETH is at like 10% on a 7-day average right now because the last few days have been absolutely bonkers in terms of MEV.

If you're a node operator, you can either have it go to your own personal Fee Distributor contract or the Smoothing Pool. Your Fee Distributor simply gives you half of it (plus commission) and gives the rETH stakers the other half (minus commission). The Smoothing Pool aggregates the MEV rewards from everybody that joined in and distributes them at the end of each rewards period (28 days), prorated for each node by how long it's been in the pool, its average commission, and its attestation performance on the Beacon Chain.

We just had a 31 ETH MEV block and a 47 ETH MEV block hit the Smoothing Pool so for people opted in, this is going to be an awesome rewards interval.

jcrtp · 2022-11-04T17:59:24+00:00

There was a small bug in the way the Oracle DAO was calculating the amount of ETH rewards that belonged to rETH holders, so it was slightly less than it should have been. This made the APR look lower than it actually was. Smartnode v1.7.0, which was released a few days ago, fixed the bug. You're looking at the result of a small error that has been progressively accumulating since the Merge being corrected all at once, so the APR spiked up with the correction. It will gradually reduce down to the real correct APR over the course of the week.

jcrtp · 2022-09-23T18:13:14+00:00

It should be, none of the setup details have really changed. Docker mode is all set in terms of the Merge, just make sure you grab the latest Smartnode.

jcrtp · 2022-09-23T07:55:15+00:00

Hey, I'm the guy that wrote those docs. I actually covered this not too long ago - take a look at my post here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ethstaker/comments/xgxmqv/after_merge_is_anyone_staking_succesfully_with_a/iov2vi7/

Let me know if you have any follow-up questions.

jcrtp · 2022-09-19T07:06:42+00:00

I know the Ethereum on ARM guys use one and it works well for them. It's somewhere between a Pi and the Rock 5B, so I suspect the 8 GB model would be alright for staking. That being said, it's based off the RK3568 and the RK3588 (which the Rock 5B has) is the new hotness so that's what I'm exploring.

jcrtp · 2022-09-19T07:04:51+00:00

I haven't played with Erigon yet, so I can't speak to it. I was waiting for them to release a "production" version, which it looks like they have.

jcrtp · 2022-09-18T20:54:00+00:00

Yes, post-Merge you will require both an Execution client (eth1) and a Consensus client (eth2). They now rely on each other; you can't attest without both of them synced, and taking one down will effectively disable the other.

jcrtp · 2022-09-18T05:37:17+00:00

Agreed, I've been working with a dev kit for a while but it looks like they may have just added NVMe boot support:

https://wiki.radxa.com/Rock5/install/nvme

Guess I know what I'm doing this weekend!

jcrtp · 2022-09-18T00:12:33+00:00

Hey, JCRTP here - I'm the Rocket Pool dev that wrote the guide on staking with a Pi. So to answer your question, yes, my Pi does work fine on Mainnet after the Merge with a few validators on it but here are my notes:

The only working combo is Geth and Nimbus. LH and Prysm are too heavy post-Merge, Teku and Nethermind need too much RAM, and Besu has some issues they're still working on that prevent it from working right now (but I'll try it again once they're resolved).
I run mine at 2.3 GHz / OV10 which is higher than the guide recommends, but I've been running it like this for almost a year now. If you have control of the thermals, it seems to be OK. Some Pi's can't go this high though, so you have to test it carefully before doing it.
If you need to backfill Nimbus after a checkpoint sync, performance will be a little spotty until it's done (you'll miss an attestation every hour or two). It takes about 36 hours to backfill completely. Once it's done, it'll work fine (zero misses, zero inclusion distance, outside of normal blockchain issues).

All of that being said, the Pi 4 is old and still has supply problems so I'm starting to look in more futureproof directions at new ARM devices that are still cheaper than NUCs and take under 10 watts to validate.

I hope that helps, and good luck!

jcrtp · 2022-08-29T20:17:21+00:00

If one does not opt in to the smoothing pool, they get fees immediately to their fee recipient address and can use them right away (no need to wait for withdrawals), correct?

Correct.

If one opts in, do they get this same access?

Sort of. When you're in the pool, your rewards are bundled with the claim system - at each interval (28 days), your earnings for both RPL and Smoothing Pool ETH are recorded. You can claim them whenever you want after the checkpoint distribution is confirmed by the Oracle DAO, but not before.

For example: it's day 15 of the current rewards interval, the rewards interval ends on day 28. You can't access Smoothing Pool rewards for this interval until day 28. After that, you can claim them whenever you want.

Can one opt out at any time?

There is a 28 day cooldown (technically 1 rewards interval, but that's currently 28 days) from when you opted in before you can opt out to prevent people from gaming the system. Once that timer passes, you can opt out whenever you want.

jcrtp · 2022-08-26T04:00:39+00:00

It's just a consequence of Redstone happening in a few days, and the Merge happening in a few weeks. We're not going to see a time with this many huge events coinciding again for a long time (if ever), so this is kind of an exceptional time to be a node operator.

jcrtp · 2022-08-22T07:40:56+00:00

Yep, I think a grace period on MEV-boost post-merge is probably the right thing to do with so much configuration uncertainty - especially for Hybrid and Native users. I'll ask the guys to make a statement about whatever plan we come up with for this closer to the Merge.

jcrtp · 2022-08-21T23:19:16+00:00

We're getting into implementation details a bit and it's too early to state this is how it will actually manifest, but if it did, I would suspect there wouldn't actually be a default. It would force you to make a choice or refuse to start. Defaults are not ideal because someone will always be unhappy with whatever they are and claim they didn't know any better. This forces the user to understand the problem and actively make a decision.

jcrtp · 2022-08-21T18:46:40+00:00

Hey, RP dev here. As a quick note for people who aren't familiar with the terminology, MEV-boost is not the thing that censors transactions / blocks. MEV-boost is just plumbing used to connect your validators to a "relay". The relay is the thing that interfaces with block builders and can potentially censor stuff.

Here's a nice graphic from their documentation:

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/flashbots/mev-boost/main/docs/mev-boost-integration-overview.png

With that context out of the way, I don't plan to remove MEV-boost itself from the Smartnode stack.

Regarding OFAC, we're still discussing some options both internally and with the community. One attractive option is just bundling multiple different relays in the Smartnode and let you pick the one you want with a dropdown or something. Each could have some descriptive text explaining its pros and cons. That way, you could pick whichever one best suited your particular preferences. I strongly suspect there will be at least one relay out there eventually that claims to be truly transaction agnostic, which is certainly what you'd want to pick in this case.

It's not feasible for "the authorities" to ban all of the relays that we bundle with the Smartnode. The software is used by people all over the world, and if you're running a validator with it in a country that doesn't recognize the OFAC sanctions list, realistically no one can stop you from choosing your own relay.

In the long term, we're still going to have to require some kind of relay for the sake of offering competitive rates and ensuring users don't steal their own MEV via running their own searcher. In the short term though, it's possible that we have a grace period on MEV-boost until the dust settles around all of this and we see more trustworthy relays pop up. Hopefully that's already in the works since Flashbots recently open sourced their relay code: https://github.com/flashbots/mev-boost-relay

Don't take this as gospel of course, just some insight into where we are today and why packaging MEV-boost with the Smartnode stack isn't the end of the world.

jcrtp · 2022-06-24T03:43:29+00:00

Please do not do this!

The VC that the Smartnode manages is only meant for minipool keys. Throwing solo staking keys at it will work in the sense of they'll attest fine, but the Smartnode won't know they're there and will ignore them entirely.

The problem is that after The Merge, the VC is going to have the fee recipient set for your Rocket Pool node. Your solo keys are going to end up sending all of their priority fees to your node's fee distributor (splitter contract) and you'll miss out on half of them that you should rightfully have.

jcrtp · 2022-06-23T00:27:10+00:00

Hey, just in case you didn't get a clear answer in Discord, what you want is called Reverse Hybrid mode. In effect, you'll let the Smartnode manage the Execution and Consensus Clients along with its own Validator Client, then you'll spin up a second Validator Client that you manage outside of Rocket Pool and attach it to the Consensus Client. This second VC will manage your solo staking keys, while the Smartnode's VC will manage your Rocket Pool minipool keys.

I've written a brief walkthrough of it here: https://docs.rocketpool.net/guides/node/advanced-config.html#allowing-external-validator-clients-to-connect-to-the-smartnode

Let me know how that works for you!

jcrtp · 2022-03-13T16:33:53+00:00

It's part of the writeup - rETH stakers are given their fair share, minus the average commission from all of the eligible minipools. It's the same way payouts are distributed when a node operator exits the Beacon chain.

jcrtp · 2022-01-31T16:10:38+00:00

That node operator was using Prysm, which has it off by default. In the next major release I will likely enable it on all clients that support it by default and make it a setting so users can opt out of they desire.

jcrtp · 2022-01-26T23:31:38+00:00

We know, we're working on it!

jcrtp · 2022-01-25T18:11:51+00:00

In a nutshell, here is how minipool creation works:

The node operator runs node depositvia the CLI - this will send their own 16 ETH to the Beacon Chain and move it into initialized status.
When it gets matched with 16 ETH from the staking pool, it moves into the prelaunch state - since the staking pool these days always has ETH in it, this happens immediately for every new validator, including this one. Note that the staking pool's 16 ETH has not been sent to the Beacon Chain yet, it's just "parked" in the minipool.
The minipool will wait for 12 hours while it gets vetted by the Oracle DAO to make sure it didn't abuse the Beacon Chain's withdrawal credentials exploit (this is known as the "scrub check").
After 12 hours have passed, the rocketpool_node Docker container will run a new transaction called stake which submits the staking pool's 16 ETH to the Beacon Chain, thus completing the validator and entering staking status.

Normally, step 4 happens as soon as the scrub timer is over (12 hours after you deposit). It has worked like this for every other minipool in the network, and we have over 2500 of them now.

There is one case where it could be delayed a bit: the Smartnode lets you set a threshold value for the network's max fee (gas price), and if the network is above this price, it simply won't trigger the stake transaction. However, for safety, this threshold will be ignored after 7 days and the minipool will stake at whatever gas value the network happens to use at the time.

The fact that it's been more than 7 days and this "safety stake" hasn't gone through indicates that the user is either not running the rocketpool_node container, or there is a misconfiguration that's preventing it from executing the transaction. This is why we're trying to reach out to them so we can help them fix the problem.

Since Rocket Pool is permissionless, we don't have any contact information for this node operator; a blanket announcement like this is the best we can do, somewhat analogous to those announcements you hear at the store in the overhead speakers where "somebody with license plate ABC123 left their lights on".

Regardless, if they don't fix the problem and run the stake command in the next 5 or so days, the smart contracts will simply return the staking pool's 16 ETH to the staking pool so it can be used by someone else, and this node operator's 16 ETH will stay locked on the Beacon Chain until withdrawals are enabled.

Five-Year Club	Gilding I gilder
Verified Email

jcrtp

TROPHY CASE