Lido Community Lifeguards Initiative

Proposals
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2023 - Q4 Community Lifeguard Report

This was the second quarter of the Community Lifeguard Initiative, with the proposal being passed on the 27th July. While a lot was achieved in this quarter, I’d like to highlight the onboarding of two new community lifeguards @enti and @Stakesaurus as a major milestone for this growing initiative.

Ok, so what has been achieved in Q4?

Community Staking Podcasts:

The Community Staking Podcast series has been running weekly with a range of guests from Ethereum solo home stakes, staking educators as well as Lido DAO contributors. This series aimed to provide a space to allow for more nuanced conversations to be held about Lido rather than just the viral hate that is found on X/Twitter. Hosting a range of guests gives a voice to the wider staking community, not just the loudest voice.

Towards the end of Q4, several guests were participants and supporters of the Lido Simple DVT trials. This was a great opportunity to speak to the first Lido community members and hear about their experiences as part of that initiative. I’ve said in the past that you can’t have a community if there’s no reason for people to join and nothing for them to do, and the Simple DVT trials are the first opportunity for this nascent community to begin. By amplifying the experiences of these early participants through this podcast platform as well as Q&A blog posts I hope to show the wider Ethereum staking community, both current and future, that Lido can co-exist and even support Ethereum home stakers.

Community Staking Contributor Series Blog and Q&As:

The Community Staking Contributor Series blog continued with a post “Why doesn’t Lido self-limit?”. There’s been a lot of discussion about the amount of ETH staked in the Lido protocol and I wanted to provide a summary for prospective Lido community members who wanted to understand the discussion. It was also an opportunity to look back over the past 19 months since Lido held the self-limit vote to see how the predictions and concerns played out.

For potential solo stakers reading this post with the question “Is it bad for Ethereum for me to run validators for the Lido protocol?” hopefully this post has given you an insight into the history of the self-limit vote and some additional resources to continue your research.

There was also a new type of blog post in the Contributor Series, the “Community Staking Q&A”. This was an opportunity for people who preferred a text-based interaction over the video podcast. The initial guests for this series were all Simple DVT participants discussing their backgrounds and experiences as part of the trial:

A wider range of content formats encourages diversity of guests, opinions, and readers so I hope to continue this Q&A format alongside the video podcast series in 2024.

DVT Workshops:

I conducted a live DVT workshop at the Lido Connect event in Istanbul. This workshop demonstrated how to set up both an SSV and Obol DVT operator and followed the instructions used by the Lido Simple DVT participants.

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Following this in-person workshop, I conducted two additional online workshops focusing on SSV and Obol setups individually. The goal of all of these workshops was to show how anyone could join the Simple DVT trials even with minimal technical knowledge.

Simple DVT Support:

The Simple DVT initiative got up to full speed in Q4 with a significant amount of my time spent supporting the clusters in both the SSV and Obol cohorts. The majority of the issues were discovered and resolved during the testing phase, with documentation being updated before participants started onboarding. Several issues occurred due to Holesky being a very new network without support for critical infrastructure (e.g. Safe, MEV Boost, etc.) which each had to be debugged and resolved. Overall, the trial has been very successful with the majority of participants getting up and running without any problems. With operators running on a wide range of hardware, in diverse geographic locations, and with a mix of technical abilities, I feel this was a fair representation of the current Ethereum staking ecosystem. Q4 only used Holesky testnet which gave operators a chance to show their reliability and effectiveness in their DVT clusters, with preparation taking place for mainnet clusters in Q1 2024.

New Community Lifeguards Onboarded:

As the Lido community started to grow, propelled by the Simple DVT trials, more support was needed than could be provided by a single Community Lifeguard. On the 23rd of November, I proposed two new Community Lifeguards @enti and @Stakesaurus who were voted on and approved by LEGO. An X Space was hosted to introduce the two new Community Lifeguards and give them a chance to discuss their plans and ambitions in their new role.

Planning started right away for educational initiatives and other outreach programs that could be developed now there were three Community Lifeguards. These plans will continue to develop in Q1 2024 so watch this space :eyes:

Lido DAO Contributor Meetings and Discussions:

While less tangible than the other contributions (content creation, podcasts, etc.) a significant amount of my time has been spent in meetings and on calls with Lido DAO contributors. These meetings covered various topics from V2 module designs, bonds and slashing analysis, hardware providers, staking software, and more! These meetings and discussions continue to be valuable opportunities to give feedback and opinions from solo stakers. Towards the end of Q4 the two new Community Lifeguards @enti and @Stakesaurus began attending these meetings and discussions, further increasing the range of ideas and perspectives discussed.

Q1 2024 Plans:

Educational outreach plans with the other Community Lifeguards. These include educational packages that can be used for example by communities, universities, and individuals who want to learn more about staking, LSTs, and running validators on Ethereum.

Simple DVT support will continue with the expectation that as most of the issues were resolved in the Q3 trial setup it should require less ongoing support. I plan to run a Simple DVT workshop showing Dappnode software giving an even wider reach for potential trial participants.

CSM discussions and (hopefully!) testing will be a personal focus of mine for the whole of 2024.

The Community Staking Podcasts, Contributor Series Blog, and Q&As will continue with a mixture of formats, guests, and discussions to keep the content interesting and relevant.

Direct community engagement will become a large part of the role as there are more community members to interact with. The most direct way for these interactions will be in the #community-staking-general channel in the Lido Discord, but will also include X posts, AMA Discord and Zoom sessions, etc.

Q4 2023 was a big increase in time commitment for the Community Lifeguard Initiative compared to Q3 and I expect Q1 2024 to be even busier. All of the Lido DAO contributors who support this initiative have made the experience truly enjoyable, rewarding, and importantly a great learning opportunity for myself and the Ethereum staking community. I look forward to continuing my contributions to this initiative in Q1 2024 and can’t wait to see the Lido community continue to grow!

Fees & Payment

For the contributions completed in Q4 2023 I request that LEGO consider payment based on the individual performance of the Community Lifeguards the Ethereum addresses:

Eridian
0xaB402d5F93FdF5Ec1ADe26e9C295A04dDc522A06

@enti
0x06Fb051a46cC49D99Be778BDd6Dcd3519d3820db

@Stakesaurus
0xAC2bdb872655572f616879eB32E5fB81f336974c

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