Rocket Pool node operators utilized their Smart Node Upgrade POAPs they had earned from January to April 2024 for a chance to win RPL tokens and their name featured on the commemorative POAP. woh.eth, deukey.eth, corethereum.eth, and haloooloolo.eth were victorious during the raffle! This POAP was given to all raffle participants.

v1.12.1 of Rocket Pool's Smart Node has been released! 🔶 Tons of clients (Lighthouse, Teku, Nimbus, etc) have been updated and a few Smart Node features have been added such as notifications and an updated RPL reward panel. The infamous "smartnode" term has been updated to "Smart Node" Users that updated their Smart Node version within 24 hours and post a screenshot received a POAP!

Holders of this POAP celebrated Ethereum Mainnet's upgrade to Dencun. This eagerly anticipated upgrade is projected to reduce gas fees for Layer 2 networks, unlocking greater scaling for the Ethereum ecosystem. Special thanks to the Ethereum Foundation, Ethereum Cat Herders, The Daily Gwei and EthStaker for hosting the watch party call. https://ethereum.org/ https://www.ethereumcatherders.com/ https://thedailygwei.substack.com/ https://ethstaker.cc/

On March 11, 2024, Rocket Pool launched Smartnode version 1.11.9, a crucial update for all users. It's especially necessary if you haven't upgraded to v1.11.8 or if you're using MEV-Boost v1.6. This release incorporates significant updates from clients. It's recommended for everyone to update, as it ensures compatibility with Dencun and includes various enhancements and bug fixes across all clients. Node operators that upgraded within 24 hours were awarded a POAP.

All clients have been updated to their latest Dencun-ready versions, including Geth (v1.13.11), Besu (v24.1.1), Nethermind (v1.25.3), Nimbus (v24.2.0 with regression fixes from v24.1.2), Lodestar (v1.15.0), Teku (v24.1.1), Prysm (v4.2.1, causing potential failures on certain older CPUs without AVX support on Holeski testnet after Deneb fork, but not affecting Mainnet), and Lighthouse (v4.6.0, a medium-priority release with new features, performance enhancements, and bug fixes for Mainnet users). Smartnode changes include Nimbus pruning mode defaulting to "Prune" for new users, with existing users needing manual configuration via rocketpool service config. The deprecated Prater testnet has been entirely removed from Smartnode, and Nethermind's automatic pruning threshold increased from 250 GB to 300 GB. Rocket Pool node operators that updated their software within 24 hours received this POAP.

EthStaker core crew members Yorick, Remy Roy, and Unvetica host another validator workshop. This time the crew is focused on how to update when running a non-validating RPC node, how to add a 🐼to your graffiti tag, switching from Geth to another client, showing off how to move using coincashews’s setup, in addition to having members from the Stereum team showing how to do merge-ready setup with their platform.

The address which minted this POAP participated in the KZG Summoning Ceremony: a publicly coordinated ritual to produce a random output. This output will be used in Proto-Danksharding, aka EIP 4844: an Ethereum scaling mechanism which will hopefully enable lower Layer 2 fees and greater global accessibility. EIP-4844 is expected to go live with the Dencun network upgrade in the near future. As of the time of writing, this ceremony was the largest setup of this kind when considering the number of contributions.