We would like to announce that we will have opened two new onboarding rounds for Ethereum and Solana.
Please note that there is a new Lido Node Operator landing page which can be found here. The purpose of the landing page is to gather in one place all relevant documentation relating to previous and current onboardings, as well as general resources around the application process. I want to give a special thanks to Chorus One and @FelixLts for hosting the previous landing page and doing so much of the lifting from a node operator coordination perspective.
Without further ado, here are the two new onboarding cycles:
Ethereum Wave 2
Hot on the heels of the announcement and implementation of moving from multi-sig withdrawals to smart contract withdrawals, we are looking for 3-5 Node Operators to expand the Node Operator pool in line with our stated objectives of steadily decentralizing the protocol.
Interested applicants can submit an application by following the link on the landing page or directly here.
Solana Wave 1 (supplemental set)
The launch of Lido for Solana and with that the onboarding for Solana Node Operators has been slightly delayed. We want to use the expansion of Lido’s Ethereum operator set to gather further applications to increase the initial set for Lido for Solana to between 10-20 node operators. If you belong to the initial set of short-listed applicants (you were notified by email), you do not need to do anything. Non-short listed initial applicants with complete applications will automatically be considered for this supplemental round.
Interested applicants can submit an application by following the link on the landing page or directly here.
The projected timelines for both onboarding cycles are:
Applications Open: Jul 19 – Aug 5
Evaluation Period: Aug 5 – 12*
Shortlist of recommended Node Operators to be sent by LNOSG to Lido DAO Aug 13-16
* LNOSG members please note that there will be one call at the end of this period to review all submitted evaluations and coordinate the proposal to the DAO. It is also possible that you may be asked to participate in calls with Node Operator applicants during the evaluation period in the case that these are deemed necessary for providing clarification or insight with regards to submitted applications.
Following the The Lido Node Operator Subgovernance Group (LNOSG) meeting to evaluate received onboarding applications for Ethereum (Wave 2) and Solana (Wave 1 supplemental), the LNOSG has unanimously decided to propose the following applicants for inclusion into our node operator sets for the Ethereum and Solana protocols (in no particular order):
You can find the full PDF with summary statistics and the recordings of the introduction and conclusion to the LNOSG evaluation meeting in the below public drive. Due to the privileged/confidential nature of some of the information provided in some of the applications, the portion of the call where applications were discussed in detail was not recorded.
Both shortlisted and non-shortlisted applicants have been emailed notifying them of the results. Where relevant, applicants who were not shortlisted also received comments regarding potential ways to improve their application in future rounds should they wish to reapply. If for some reason you applied but did not receive an email, please reach out to [email protected].
Governance voting
A snapshot will be proposed in the coming days and the link will be added here (Snapshot). The snapshot will be for the inclusion of the 5 Ethereum node operators and 15 Solana node operators (the 5 above and the 10 already shortlisted applicants from the application round that ended in June). Should the Lido DAO disagree with any of the proposed applicants, the LNOSG will reconvene to propose edits to the list.
Next Steps
I will be coordinating with the technical teams for each protocol to align on timelines for onboarding the new node operators onto Lido’s testnets and eventually mainnet for each protocol. The estimated timeline for the new node operators to be fully on mainnet is sometime in September.
Is there any place where we can check the distribution of Lido validators in real time?
I think having the number of different Node Operators within Lido, and how many validators each of them is running would be very helpful for transparency. Thanks!
