As a part of our continued efforts to decentralize our protocol, we would like to announce that we are opening a new Node Operator onboarding round for Ethereum. New onboarding rounds for Solana and Terra will probably open sometime in the coming months.
You can find the Lido Node Operator landing page here. The purpose of the landing page is to gather all relevant documentation relating to previous and current onboardings in one place, as well as provide a general summary of the application process.
Applying
If you are a Node Operator interested in joining Lido’s Ethereum Node Operator set, you may submit an application by following the link on the landing page or directly here.
If you’ve applied in a previous round but weren’t selected for the short-list, you may indicate that you have already applied and you will not need to fill out the entire form. Alternatively, you may choose to re-fill out the form in case you wish to add additional details to your application.
Deadline
The application form will be open from November 15 - November 30 23:59 UTC.
Evaluation and Onboarding
Applications will be evaluated by the Lido Node Operator Sub-governance Group (LNOSG) the following week and a proposed shortlist will be sent to the DAO for approval. Once approved, onboarding new operators usually takes 1-2 weeks, so we aim for the new set of operators to be live on mainnet around mid-December.
We had a really great turnout this round, with 23 applicants (in the previous round we had 13 for Ethereum), and in general a very strong applicant pool. Given the strength of the applicants, the The Lido Node Operator Subgovernance Group (LNOSG) decided to select 8 applicants for the proposed shortlist.
During the meeting on Dec 08 2021, the LNOSG has unanimously decided to propose the following applicants for inclusion into our node operator set for the Ethereum protocol (in no particular order):
Gweilabs contacted Lido Node Operator Management and indicated that they would not be able to proceed to mainnet in the desired timeframe. Based on alignment with the LNOSG, Gweilabs’ application has been postponed for the next onboarding round, therefore they will not be included in the shortlist proposal but will be afforded an honorary mention.
*ConsenSys has been shortlisted but marked as conditional pending alignment on legal questions that were raised by the applicant during the application process.
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 vote. The snapshot will be for the inclusion of the 8 Ethereum Node Operators. Should the 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 late December / early January (allowing for holidays).
This is indeed a very good news and smart move from Lido. As community we appreciate this as it will help increase the decentralization of Ethereum Network and the health of the entire ecosystem
