Rocket Pool

Rocket Pool lets people earn Ethereum staking rewards without running a validator or holding 32 ETH. Stakers deposit ETH and receive rETH; node operators put up part of each validator's ETH themselves and borrow the rest from the pool. The protocol's smart contracts handle deposits, validator creation, rewards and withdrawals, and its code is open source on GitHub.

The documentation says Rocket Pool was started in late 2016 by David Rugendyke, released an alpha in May 2017, ran five public betas, and launched on Ethereum mainnet in October 2021. It describes a team working alongside a community of more than three thousand node operators. The legal entity behind the team is not named on the documentation pages we could open; rocketpool.net blocked automated access today, so its terms were not read.

Governance runs through RPL, the protocol token. Node operators who stake RPL vote in the protocol DAO (pDAO), which sets parameters and spends the treasury, and an elected security council can act quickly in emergencies. A separate oracle DAO (oDAO) of trusted nodes reports validator balances and sets the rETH exchange rate. RPL has 5% annual inflation; 22% of that funds the pDAO, the majority rewards node operators who stake RPL, and a minority funds the oDAO.

Since the Saturn 1 upgrade, a node operator creates a megapool validator by bonding 4 ETH, and the protocol adds 28 ETH from stakers to make the 32 ETH a validator needs. One megapool contract per operator can serve many validators. Before Saturn 1 the minimum bond was 8 ETH per minipool; legacy minipools still exist but new minipool deposits are disabled. The bond is a pDAO setting, and a later upgrade, Saturn 2, plans 1.5 ETH bonds after an operator's first two validators.

rETH does not rebase. Each token is worth a growing amount of ETH as consensus rewards, priority fees and MEV earned by Rocket Pool validators are added. Operators keep the rewards on their own bonded ETH and take a commission on rewards from the 28 ETH they borrow. Under Saturn 1's revenue split that commission is 14% in total: a 5% base share to every megapool operator and a 9% voter share to operators who stake RPL, with the pDAO treasury share set to 0%. rETH holders receive the rest. All three shares can be changed by pDAO vote.

The operator's bond is also the first line of protection. If a validator loses ETH through poor performance or a penalty, the operator's bonded ETH covers it first; only a loss larger than the bond is spread across all rETH holders through a lower exchange rate. This is the main design difference from curated-operator protocols such as Lido, where operators do not post their own ETH. Our ratings cover how Rocket Pool compares with other liquid staking tokens.

rETH holders pay through the commission, not through a separate management fee. Their yield is Ethereum's staking yield minus the 14% commission on pooled ETH, and on 25 October 2026 DefiLlama showed rETH at 1.81% APY, with a 30-day average of 2.09%.

Legacy minipools keep the commission written into their own contracts and are outside the Saturn 1 split. Rewards for node operators are paid in ETH and, while inflation lasts, RPL.

Rocket Pool's contracts are upgradeable through on-chain governance. Since the Houston upgrade (v1.3.0, released June 2024), any node operator can raise a pDAO proposal under an optimistic, challenge-based voting system, and voters can veto proposals they judge malicious. Saturn 1 added guardrails: a delay between a protocol upgrade passing and taking effect, which gives users time to leave and lets the security council veto it (RPIP-60), plus limits on how often the oDAO can move the rETH exchange rate (RPIP-61) and how many MEV penalties it can apply per week (RPIP-58).

Before the 2021 launch the contracts were audited by Sigma Prime and ConsenSys Diligence, according to the docs, and DefiLlama also links a Trail of Bits review. Saturn 1 was audited by Cantina, Bailsec and Sigma Prime, with the reports published on rocketpool.net. An Immunefi bug bounty pays up to $150,000 for critical vulnerabilities. Rocket Pool does not describe any insurance for depositors beyond the operator bond.

We found no exploit of Rocket Pool's contracts in its documentation. DefiLlama's hacks database does list a $3.8 million phishing entry under Rocket Pool's name on 30 March 2023, marked as targeting a token, with no source or details; we could not confirm what it refers to, and it is not described as a protocol exploit.

The main practical risk is exit liquidity. Burning rETH for ETH through the protocol only works while ETH is available in the deposit pool or the rETH contract. Saturn 1 now holds back a buffer of up to 1% of rETH TVL in the rETH contract for withdrawals, but a large exit can still exceed it, at which point the holder must sell rETH on the market and accept whatever price is there. Our explainer on why liquid staking tokens trade below their value covers that mechanism.

Other risks are smart contract bugs or a bad upgrade, oDAO errors in the exchange rate, losses bigger than an operator's bond, and Ethereum-level events. The smaller 4 ETH bond means each validator has less operator capital in front of rETH holders than under the old 8 ETH and 16 ETH minipools, in exchange for more operators and more rETH capacity.

Stakers use the Rocket Pool staking site at stake.rocketpool.net or buy rETH on a DEX or a layer-2 network. Minting directly from the protocol gives exactly the rETH the deposit is worth, minus the 0.05% fee, with no slippage, but only while the deposit pool has room; the site routes through CoW Swap when protocol capacity or liquidity is not available, and shows which route it will use. The minimum is 0.01 ETH and there is no maximum.

To leave, a holder switches the site to unstake and trades rETH back for ETH. If the protocol holds enough ETH, the burn is at the current exchange rate; if not, the trade goes to the market. rETH can also simply be held in any Ethereum wallet, and its value keeps rising without any claim. Running a node is a separate path that needs 4 ETH per validator, a dedicated machine and the Smart Node software; the docs have a full guide and a test network to practice on.

Rocket Pool's main support venue is its Discord server, which the docs point to for questions. The docs at docs.rocketpool.net, the governance forum at dao.rocketpool.net and the improvement proposals at rpips.rocketpool.net are the reference sources, and the GitHub organization lists rocketpool.net and the X account Rocket_Pool. The Smart Node software that node operators run is published in that GitHub organization.

Rocket Pool spent five years in development before mainnet and has since moved toward cheaper, smaller operator bonds.

• Late 2016: project started by David Rugendyke.
• May 2017: alpha released; five public betas follow.
• October 2021: mainnet launch, after Sigma Prime and ConsenSys Diligence audits.
• June 2024: Houston upgrade (v1.3.0) brings on-chain pDAO governance and the security council.
• 28 October 2024: Saturn 0 allows ETH-only minipools with no RPL requirement.
• 11 February 2026: Saturn 1 contracts (v1.4.0) released, introducing megapools, 4 ETH bonds and RPL revenue sharing.
• June 2026: the Saturn 0 bonus commission ends, four reward intervals after Saturn 1's launch.