Around October 30, 2025, Beaconcha.in data provided by Hildobby, showed that the share of validators on the Ethereum beacon chain operated by Lido had fallen below 22%. 22% is regarded as a critical threshold for entity size, because larger entities represent a centralization and governance risk to the network. We welcome Lido as an aligned actor and we celebrate the robustness of the beacon chain.

The Rocket Pool community got spooky! In the month of October, community members changed their profile pictures to Halloween-themed avatars and earned a POAP for participating.

Smart Node v1.17.0 is now live, bringing major client updates—most of which raise the default block gas limit to 45M—and a new pruning feature that allows node operators to reduce storage needs by enabling partial history expiry. This is a recommended update for all Node Operators. Full details and upgrade instructions: https://github.com/rocket-pool/smartnode/releases/tag/v1.17.0.

Holders of this POAP painted 200 pixels or more, on the POAP Art Testing Canvas of February 2025. This POAP also serves as an entry ticket to a future POAP Fun raffle.

On March 26, 2025, at Epoch 2048, the Hoodi Testnet upgraded to the Pectra fork. If the upgrade is successful it will lend a strong signal that mainnet is ready for the Pectra upgrade.

It’s been a turbulent week for crypto, with RPL and other altcoins continuing to struggle as the token price hovers near $5. While the market remains uncertain, Rocket Pool has exciting upgrades on the way, such as Saturn on the horizon. Until then, the price action will be a bumpy ride. Community members within the Rocket Pool Discord that share their struggles receive a POAP.

Ken hosted a special guest from HAI to chat about a new DeFi opportunity for rETH liquid stakers. Join the Rocket Pool community calls on Discord at discord.gg/rocketpool