Kicking off the #TeamStaking program with Dappnode

Aragon

• Feb 8, 2024
• 4 min read

It’s time for us to do our part. We’re kicking off an internal #TeamStaking program in partnership with our long-time friends at Dappnode. Our goal is to have all Aragon contributors staking at home by making running a node accessible and fun!

We’ll be using DVT and teaming up with Obol and Diva to provide our team members with the support and education they need to succeed.

We hope organizations across web3 follow suit and join us in decentralizing Ethereum, the infrastructure we rely on to build our protocol and products.

I am a huge #Stakefromhome advocate and hope this @AragonProject internal program gets picked up by all of the organisations in web3! We all have a duty to help decentralizing Ethereum, the infrastructure we rely on to build our protocol and products.

— superphiz.eth 🦇🔊🛡️ (@superphiz) February 8, 2024

Why Aragon is #TeamStaking

Help secure the future of DAOs. DAOs rely on the decentralization of the underlying network they are built on. Without an unstoppable network, DAOs themselves cannot be unstoppable. Decentralization ensures that the network is censorship and capture resistant. If there is one chink in the armor, it will eventually be exploited.

Decentralize the Aragon infrastructure. Having our entire team running their own nodes builds capacity to run certain pieces of our own infrastructure—whether that be running a backend or using a long latency service to decouple vote actions from their timestamps, ensuring voter privacy.

Learn and have fun. The best way to learn how Ethereum infrastructure works is by participating in it. Team staking is also a great opportunity for team-building. Running a cluster is one way we can work together to achieve a common goal!

“Staking isn’t only about maximizing revenue. Revenue is part of the reward for providing value to the network. Ethereum has put a lot of effort into designing a system that, unlike other blockchains, can be made extremely resilient to interferences, but it’s up to us to take advantage of these possibilities and make Ethereum an uncensorable, unstoppable network.”

– Pol Lanski, COO of Dappnode

How #TeamStaking works and how your organization can replicate it

We hope organizations across web3 follow suit and join us in making Ethereum more resilient. Here’s how the program works:

Decrease the cost of Dappnodes for our contributors by buying in bulk and subsidizing a portion of the costs. If needed, contributors can pay back the cost over time.
Provide educational workshops and 1-on-1 support for stakers with providers such as Obol and Diva.
Use DVT technology for #TeamStaking, so that it’s accessible to everyone. It also protects your contributors against single nodes failing or acting maliciously. With Obol, you can create clusters and decrease the required bond. Or you can remove the bond all together and run validators through Lido or Ether.fi to scale and diversify their operator sets. Soon, Diva will launch on mainnet and this self-bond will decrease to 1 ETH.

“Home staking is at the heart of Ethereum decentralization and something we focus on enabling with DVT. We are very excited to be supporting this initiative with Aragon, and we hope that this is the first of many that participate in Team Staking.”

– Brett Li, Chief Growth Officer of Obol

#TeamStaking powered by Dappnode, Diva, and Obol

Dappnode makes it easy and accessible for anyone to run a node from home. Encouraging our teams to stake from home not only adds more nodes, but increases the global distribution of the network. The more individual nodes we run all over the world, the more resilient the blockchain is.

Distributed Validator Technology (DVT) is what makes team staking possible. This makes running a validator more accessible and less risky, because responsibilities are split amongst a group of computers rather than just one. In our case, we’ll be forming groups of Aragon team members to join forces and run a validator together. Using tools like Obol and Diva, you don’t need to have 32 ETH to run a validator—you can pool your ETH with others.

Obol’s Charon is a DVT middleware, enabling one or many Ethereum validators to be run by a cluster of nodes. Using splitter smart contracts, node operators can divide up the initial 32ETH requirement and also the staking rewards earned. Protocols like Lido and Ether.fi are integrating Obol DVT to scale and diversify their operator set.

Diva is a liquid staking protocol using distributed validator technology. It is resilient and trust-minimized, because keys are split between computers rather than a single individual holding them. We’ll be testing Diva protocol on testnet for now, and preparing our teams to participate in the mainnet launch.

On top of running our own validators, we will also choose minority Consensus and Execution clients. Client diversity is important because running execution and consensus clients that do not have a majority share can help mitigate severe risks for the network, such as the consensus layer not being able to finalize, or forking and finalizing incorrectly.

“We are thrilled to have been chosen to be part of Aragon’s #TeamStaking initiative and have the chance to support them on something we truly believe is at the core of Ethereum itself and fully aligns with Diva Staking’s foundational values. We encourage more teams to follow suit and join the movement to make every DAO, every team, and every community more and more decentralized.

– Raul Calvo, CEO of Diva