Ken hosted a special guest from ethOS, makers of the dGEN1, to chat about a potential Rocket Pool integration. Join the Rocket Pool community calls on Discord at discord.gg/rocketpool

The Rocket Pool community is celebrating the launch of Saturn 0, an important step toward Saturn 1, enabling new minipools to operate without requiring staked RPL. These minipools offer a 5% commission, with a bonus up to 9% if participating in the Smoothing Pool, depending on RPL stake levels. This bonus will phase out four reward periods after Saturn 1, encouraging users to transition while still earning RPL rewards with any amount of RPL stake. Under Saturn 0, any amount of RPL stake qualifies for rewards. This POAP was awarded to community members who attended the event in the Rocket Pool Discord.

This POAP commemorates Jasper’s impactful Twitter thread on Rocket Pool’s roadmap to 2.0, highlighting four major milestones: - Constellation L2: Now live with $xrETH, the first fully yield-bearing LST - Saturn 0: ETH-only bonds, launching in under two weeks - Saturn 1: Featuring LEB4s, direct value capture, and a full redesign - Saturn 2: Sublinear bonding down to 1.5 ETH, plus $RPL buy & burn Community members who read and boosted the thread’s visibility were awarded this POAP.

Rocket Pool has released v1.13.10 of the Smart Node, a recommended update featuring important bug fixes, client updates, and minor enhancements. This version includes updates to Geth, Besu, Reth, Teku, Nimbus, and Nethermind, along with new MEV-Boost support for the Holesky testnet and optimizations for oDAO RPC calls. Additional improvements include Reth peer parameter controls, cleanup for V10, and fixes to various issues. Rocket Pool node operators that were the first to upgrade received a POAP. This month's POAP was designed by talented Icelandic community member IcelandCalling.eth.

As Rocket Pool launches to a new beginning with RP v2, the community takes a trip down memory lane. In the POAP, Stakeman wearing new merch from the soon to be RP Store, represents the future memories we will make as he supports our trip down memory lane for the Rocket Pool community. We are here (at the star in the center) celebrating this amazing crypto-journey and ready to Face Down any challenges together. Familiar faces and the colorful situations we’ve found ourselves in adorn the landscape of our journey. To get this POAP, community members reminisce (in the discord) over past events.

Rocket Pool has released v1.13.8 of the Smart Node. Smart Node 1.13.8 adds contribution guidelines, flags bloXroute Max Profit relay as censoring, supports configuring Nethermind's pruning, and auto-initializes voting power. It also removes the Eden Relay, improves voting command text, and adds a warning for uninitialized voting power during staking after the hotfix. Rocket Pool node operators that updated swiftly received a POAP.

On August 5, a shaky market led to super low prices for the RPL (Rocket Pool) token. As the token dipped below $10, community members shared the state of their portfolios. This POAP was given to members who participated in and witnessed this catastrophic market event.

Rocket Pool has begin the official governance process for the RPIP-49 tokenomics rework after extensive stakeholder feedback and polishing of the specifications. A sentiment poll has been posted to decide whether to move the rework to a snapshot vote, with the flexibility to make minor adjustments during implementation. Alternative proposals by 1kx and ib1gymnast are also under consideration, and voters should read the details and make an informed decision on the future of Rocket Pool. Only participants that voted, left a meaningful comment, and posted in the appropriate thread received a POAP.

On July 11, 2024, Rocket Pool released version 1.13.7 of the Smart Node. This recommended update includes client updates, bug fixes, and changes such as updating the Nethermind auto pruning threshold to 350 GB, fixing oDAO balances/prices submissions, deprecating node voting commands, and improving delegate and signaling-address wording. Node operators that updated quickly received a POAP.

The Rocket Pool Houston release delivered Protocol DAO on-chain voting. Shortly, the Protocol DAO will be able to vote on Snapshot for meta governance and vote on-chain to make protocol changes. Before Rocket Pool can enable Protocol DAO voting, node operators need to initialize their voting power in the new system and update their signaling address that is used to vote on Snapshot. Node operators that initialized their voting power by July 15 received a POAP.