Rocket Pool

There are two ways in. Stakers deposit as little as 0.01 ETH and get rETH at the protocol rate, minus a 0.05% deposit fee (docs). Node operators run their own Ethereum validator hardware, put up part of the 32 ETH themselves and receive the rest from the stakers' deposit pool. Anyone can become a node operator; there is no application or approval list.

The operator's bond is what makes this work without trusting anyone. Their ETH sits in the same validator as the pool's, and losses from slashing or downtime come out of the operator's share first. Since the Saturn 1 upgrade that bond is 4 ETH, so each operator validator borrows 28 ETH from rETH holders.

Rewards are split by a formula governance can adjust, called UARS. As of Saturn 1, of the rewards earned on borrowed ETH, 5% goes to the operator as commission, 9% goes to operators in proportion to the RPL they stake, and the rest goes to rETH holders (Saturn 1 docs). That is a 14% total cut against the 10% Lido charges, which is the price of an open operator set. RPL, the protocol token, is no longer required to run a node; staking it is optional and now earns an ETH revenue share rather than only inflation.

rETH is Rocket Pool's staking receipt. Unlike stETH it does not rebase: your token count stays the same and each rETH is redeemable for more ETH over time. On 27 September 2026 the contract reported about 316,200 rETH at an exchange rate of 1.1726 ETH, roughly 370,800 ETH of stakers' money (Etherscan). DefiLlama puts the whole protocol, including operator bonds, at about $1.40 billion (DefiLlama).

That rate is reported on-chain by the Oracle DAO, an invite-only group of nodes that relays Beacon Chain balances to Ethereum mainnet. Saturn 1 capped how often it can change the rate (RPIP-61), and now routes new deposits into a buffer inside the rETH contract, up to 1% of rETH TVL, so redemptions can be paid without waiting for validators to exit (RPIP-65).

Searching for reth mostly finds something else: Reth is also an Ethereum execution client written in Rust by Paradigm, and a character in the game Palia. Rocket Pool's token is written rETH.

Rocket Pool was started in late 2016 by David Rugendyke and ran an alpha from May 2017 and five public testnet betas before mainnet (docs FAQ). The planned October 2021 launch was postponed after whitehat Dmitri Tsumak reported a withdrawal-credential front-running attack through the bug bounty on 4 October (post-mortem); the fix, an Oracle DAO check that can scrub a malicious minipool at the operator's expense, shipped with launch later in 2021.

Saturn 1 was the largest change since launch. Megapools replace one contract per validator with one contract per operator, which is what made the 4 ETH bond affordable in gas. It was audited by Cantina, Bailsec and Sigma Prime. As of September 2026 the Smart Node client (v1.24.0, 16 September) already contains Saturn 2 code, switched off until the upgrade is voted in and deployed (release notes).

No exploit or loss of staker funds is on record since mainnet. The protocol's defence is structural: every validator has operator ETH in front of the stakers' ETH, and operators who also stake RPL provide extra collateral. The weaker point is control, which sits with three bodies:

• Protocol DAO (pDAO): node operators voting with staked RPL. Since Houston it runs fully on-chain and sets parameters such as bond size and the revenue split.
• Oracle DAO (oDAO): invite-only nodes that report balances, the rETH rate and rewards trees, and vote on contract upgrades.
• Security council: elected by the pDAO to act fast in an emergency.

Rocket Pool's contracts are upgradeable, not immutable: the oDAO approves new contract versions, and Saturn 1 added forced delegate upgrades so megapools cannot stay on old code. What Saturn 1 also added is RPIP-60, a delay between an upgrade passing and executing so stakers can leave, with a security council veto (Saturn 1 docs). Rocket Pool runs an Immunefi bounty paying up to $150,000 for critical bugs. For how we weigh the custody question, see the Rocket Pool review.