Launching Our Alpha Release

Brett Li -

Less than 2 months ago, we shared the key milestones on our Road to V1. After launching a distributed validator on Ethereum Mainnet and a Bia Testing Program that wildly exceeded our expectations, we’re happy to announce that we’ve now officially entered the Alpha Release of the Obol Network: the first set of Mainnet DVs deployed by the community. What does it mean? Let us elaborate.

What is Alpha?

The Alpha release of the Obol Network starts our process of progressively integrating the Obol protocol into staking applications. Since this is the first time Ethereum Mainnet DVs are deployed outside of the Obol Core Team, we’ll be carefully launching a limited number of DVs with a group of trusted partners.

Launching in this controlled way allows us to provide the necessary attention and support to ensure that early deployments are built with collaboration and care. During this phase, we will also be making sure to capture learnings on Mainnet (and not just Goerli) in preparation for our V1 launch.

Participating in Alpha

We’ve been fortunate to have the support of forward-thinking members of the validator community who’ve committed to being early adopters of DVT. As part of the Alpha launch, we’re working with a set of launch partners who’ve already deployed an initial set of DV clusters with us on Mainnet. These clusters are operated by:

Sassal's latest tweet about the potential impact of DVT

The different configurations of these initial clusters (different locations, size of validator entities, number of operator entities, etc.) showcase the critical goal of our Alpha release to continue testing a wide range of different DV setups to improve anti-correlation in the network upon our V1 launch.

During Alpha, we will look to expand the operator set by adding 25 DV clusters in two types of configurations.

  • Solo Clusters: In a solo cluster, all nodes in the DV will be run by a single entity or individual. In this configuration, the key benefit of DVT is to provide high availability for the validator setup while reducing overall infrastructure costs.
  • Multi-Org Clusters: In a multi-org cluster, nodes within a single DV cluster are run by two or more distinct entities or individuals. By coming together to validate as a group or community, the validators in a multi-org cluster can see better performance, reduced slashing risk, and increased decentralization.

In each deployment, we will be limiting the number of validators run by each cluster to one unless otherwise agreed upon (read our Terms of Service).

UPDATE: Subsequent to the initial Alpha launch, we have signed on additional participants who are currently (or close to) running their own DV cluster with us on Mainnet. These additional clusters are operated by:

Interested in Getting Involved?


If you’re interested in learning more about how to get involved during our Alpha phase, please join our Discord to get regular updates. As designed, we will keep the number of participants in Alpha small, learn from the initial deployments, and increase the scale in our upcoming Beta phase and V1 Launch.

We will also be holding our first ever community call on Apr. 20th at 5:00PM UTC. We will be diving into details about the state of the project and what's to come on our journey to V1. Hold your calendar now!