Nimbus v1.0.8 release and Rocket Pool integration

If you want to try your hand at using Nimbus with Rocket Pool, we recommend checking out this wonderful guide by Joe Clapis (note it is addressed to Pi users and very much a WIP).

Last week we cut our v1.0.8 release.

Improvements include:

• Improved libp2p scoring (we now disconnect you from badly performing peers and prioritise peers with better latency and throughput)
• Inclusion of next attestation time on every Slot end log message (to make sure you miss as few attestations as possible on node restarts).
• A fix to a rare crash triggered when connecting to a web3 provider using a secure web socket, a couple of JSON-RPC spec violations  (we fixed a bug in the json module used to read eth1 data which could have allowed a malicious eth1 provider to crash Nimbus), and two stale bootstrap node addresses.

With this release Nimbus is officially ready for Rocket Pool's final Beta (exact date tbd).

This is something we are particularly excited about.

We believe decentralised staking pools like Rocket Pool (and DappNodeDAO, which will be launching later this year) are essential to ensuring Ethereum's future as an unbreakable and censorship-resistant system.

As it stands, the combination of large exchanges acquiring small providers (a trend which we believe is set to continue), exchanges offering risk-free custodial staking (this will probably only get worse with free staking), and the cost of independent staking becoming prohibitively expensive for most (at time of writing it costs almost $50,000 to run a validator) has created a perfect storm for validator centralisation.

If we're not careful, we may end 2021 with an Ethereum which devolves to consensus by large exchanges. In other words, a successful re-invention of the existing system from a centralisation of power perspective.

With Coinbase staking around the corner, here is one data point which highlights just how important the coming months will be:

Why Rocket Pool?

The team has proven itself to be well-aligned with Ethereum's philosophy and culture.

Strong evidence of this is the fact that they've waited for the implementation of smart contract withdrawals before launching -- this ensures they are a truly non-custodial protocol right from the get go.

While we await precise details of the governance structure, we are also encouraged by their plans to hand over control of the protocol to a DAO – a DAO which we hope to be a part of.

Resources

If you want to try your hand at using Nimbus with Rocket Pool, we recommend checking out this wonderful guide by Joe Clapis (note it is addressed to Pi users and very much a WIP): https://github.com/jclapis/rp-pi-guide/blob/main/Preliminary-Setup.md

If you'd like to learn more about Rocket Pool, we recommend reading the following resources:

• Rocket Pool part1 explainer
  https://medium.com/rocket-pool/rocket-pool-staking-protocol-part-1-8be4859e5fbd
• Rocket Pool part2 explainer
  https://medium.com/rocket-pool/rocket-pool-staking-protocol-part-2-e0d346911fe1
• Rocket Pool 2.5 — Rolling Beta
  https://beta.rocketpool.net/soon/
• Rocket Pool Docs
  https://rocket-pool.readthedocs.io/en/latest
• How Rocket Pool can democratise staking
  https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/how-ethereum-can-democratize-eth2

We'll be adding a couple of guides to our documentation (https://nimbus.guide/) shortly.