TL;DR

• Proposal to onboard Rocket Pool rETH
• Proposed trading liquidity is 250K BNT.
• There are no apparent security concerns that would prohibit whitelist status.
• Rocket Pool is an established platform for Ethereum 2.0 staking

Token Address: 0xae78736cd615f374d3085123a210448e74fc6393

Project Website: rocketpool.net

Token Security

rETH is minted when stakers deposit ETH into the Rocket Pool deposit pool and rETH is burnt when stakers withdraw their ETH. The rETH token value is backstopped by ETH (based on ETH collateral) and its exchange rate continually increases against ETH (based on rewards generated by Ethereum PoS). The rETH exchange rate is updated daily by the Rocket Pool Oracle DAO. The Rocket Pool Oracle DAO is a set of bonded/incentivised actors, made up of 14 high-profile members of the Ethereum staking community. Exchange rate updates require a 51% consensus. The top 10 rETH holders currently account for ~60% of the supply. These include a few large rETH investors (who have deposited ETH into the Rocket Pool protocol), Uniswap V3, and L2 gateways. Unlike most tokens, this lack of distribution is less of a problem due to the ETH backstop and liquidity provided by the Rocket Pool deposit pool. The Rocket Pool contracts do not have permissions that grant administrators unrestricted mint/burn capabilities.

Project

Rocket Pool is the first truly decentralised Ethereum staking protocol. Rocket Pool provides a liquid staking experience for Ethereum stakers; they do not need to run a validator, and they can contribute any amount of ETH. The rETH liquid staking token accumulates value against ETH over time. Simply swapping ETH for rETH (or buying it on a secondary market) provides access to Ethereum staking rewards.

Tokenomics

rETH is the Rocket Pool protocol’s liquid staking token. The token represents a person’s stake in Ethereum’s Proof-of-Stake plus the rewards generated over time by the protocol. Rocket Pool incentivises permissionless node operators to run Ethereum PoS validators. Each Rocket Pool node operator, brings 16 ETH that is matched with 16 ETH from the Rocket Pool deposit pool, to form the 32 ETH required for Ethereum staking. Node operators also lock RPL collateral as an insurance promise to the protocol.

Community and Communication

Rocket Pool has an active community on Discord and Reddit. The core team also operates an official Twitter and Medium account. Rocket Pool source code is open source, available on Github, and frequently updated by the core development team. Rocket Pool’s founder David Rugendyke has been Rocket Pool’s spokesperson for 5 years and Rocket Pool’s General Manager Darren Langley also represents the project. The core team is available for the community on Discord.

Available Audits

Rocket Pool has been extensively audited by high-profile smart contract audit firms:

• Sigma Prime

• Consensys Diligence

• Trail of Bits

Rocket Pool also has an Immunefi Bug Bounty program in place.

Market and Trading Data

• rETH’s price at the time of writing is ~$2,438
• All-time high $4,814.31 (1st December 2021)
• All-time low $2,068.89 (27th January 2022)
• 32,546 tokens in circulation
• Theoretical maximum supply of rETH is equal to the maximum supply of Ethereum
• The rETH token is available on Uniswap (mainnet, Arbitrum, Optimism) and Balancer (mainnet)
• The 24-hour spot volumes range from $34k (Uniswap mainnet) to $148k (Uniswap Arbitrum)

Benefits for Bancor

The Ethereum staking market will continue to grow strongly, due to its relatively low counter-party risk. Liquid staking tokens are an important financial primitive in DeFi and have the potential to appeal more broadly. rETH is clearly developing, in terms of circulation and trade volumes, but it represents the greater choice in the liquid staking market. The project is widely known; its significant growth in a short time (370m+ in just 6 weeks) shows its potential as a leading project in the Ethereum staking market (Rocket Pool are already #2). Liquid staking tokens intrinsically fit into the DeFi landscape; as liquidity; as lending collateral; as investment vault strategies. Integration opportunities with other protocols are numerous and exciting. Rocket Pool has been active in the Ethereum community for over 5 years. During this time, it has developed a highly engaged community within Discord and on Twitter. There are certain marketing opportunities that mutually benefit Bancor and Rocket Pool. 3 4 / 4