Introducing the Distributed Validator Launchpad

Ethereum’s mission has been and will always be about giving people from different parts of the world and walks of life the opportunity to benefit from a global, decentralized settlement layer. The recent move to proof of stake only furthers that mission by allowing more people to participate in securing the network by running a validator. But there’s more work to be done to make it easier and safer for people to participate in becoming network validators.

December 1st marks the two-year anniversary of the Beacon Chain launch. While at ConsenSys, I was fortunate enough to work on the original Eth2 (now Staking) Launchpad that made it easy and secure for anyone to launch a validator. The north star was to ensure that no one lost their funds when generating keys and setting up a new validator for the Beacon Chain, and AFAIK we’ve achieved that. The Staking Launchpad got 100k+ views shortly after launch and is still in use today to set up new nodes by people all over the world.

Launchpad hit 100k views in the past 24 hours! 🦏

I know because @Battenfield just had to upgrade our Infura account.

— carlbeek.eth 🕯 (@CarlBeek) November 5, 2020

Today, I’m happy to announce that Obol Labs has launched a Distributed Validator Launchpad to provide an easy and secure way for anyone to launch a distributed validator cluster with their peers. We’ve been testing the DV Launchpad in alpha for the past few months, using the dapp in hackathons, and now we’re ready to open it up to a public beta on Goerli testnet.

As we’ve written extensively about, DVT is the next evolution of validator architecture, adding a middleware layer that builds resiliency and reduces slashing risk for all types of validators (full intro here).

The DV Launchpad walks users through the entire process of setting up a new DV cluster. From setting up a cluster configuration, getting all operators to accept the configuration, generating key shares through a distributed key generation (DKG) ceremony, and ultimately verifying that the cluster is live (quick start guide here).

With the DV Launchpad, our goal is to continue to enable more people to safely participate in becoming a validator, which improves Ethereum resiliency, scale, and decentralization. The DV Launchpad provides a step-by-step UI that lowers the technical barrier, reduces errors, simplifies coordination, and improves security for the entire process of creating a new DV cluster.

Now we’re ready to put it to the test. 🧪

We will be running our next testing program, codenamed Bia, focused on ensuring the ease-of-use and quality of the DV Launchpad. We plan on launching this testing program early next year. We will be getting the DV Launchpad in the hands of all types and sizes of validators, from our institutional and liquid staking partners to our community of validators.

If you’re interested in getting involved with the next testing effort, pre-register here. Come build the new era of proof of stake with us! 🚀