Additions to Ethereum Node Operator Set - Wave 4

The Lido DAO has approved eight new Node Operators for Lido's Ethereum set with mainnet onboarding currently underway.

As part of the roadmap to decentralization on Ethereum, Lido conducted an open onboarding application and evaluation round in April and May of 2022 for the inclusion of additional Node Operators into its Ethereum operator set.

Following the evaluation of 42 applications by the Lido Node Operator Subgovernance Group (LNOSG), a cohort consisting of eight operators was shortlisted and sent to the DAO for approval, which was finalized and approved via snapshot on June 5th 2022. This brings the total number of independent NOs with Lido to 29.

Despite the original intention to onboard a larger cohort, recent market conditions and the slower pace of deposit inflows to Lido led the LNOSG to determine that proceeding conservatively was prudent at this time. More information about the application and evaluation process can be found on Lido's research forum.

The Node Operator Management team has begun optimistically coordinating with these eight operators to begin the process of participating on the Lido testnet.

Onboarding Ethereum Client Teams

This is the first time that Lido has onboarded Ethereum client teams (both consensus layer and execution layer) to its operator set. Lido has always been at the forefront of finding ways to support Ethereum core protocol contributors.

Onboarding client teams as operators is something we have always wanted to do as a way for these teams to have a revenue stream that is directly related to the hard work that they do for creating the public goods that Ethereum runs on. We waited because we wanted to be sure that client teams were sufficiently progressed with all of their hard work preparing for the Merge, and also to ensure that they had sufficient experience running validators at scale following the Ethereum Foundation’s client incentive program.

We believe that the inclusion of client teams will not only serve to increase the effectiveness and diversity of our operator set, but also strengthen the DAO as the client teams lend their expertise and voices to matters of governance.

Adding Smaller Operators

Following through with our stated goal in our Operator Set Strategy to empower smaller operators, we also focused on onboarding organizations which have only recently started to operate at scale, but have a long history of steadfast ecosystem participation and educational efforts, who will undoubtedly bring value to Lido both as operators and as educators and community builders.

Wave 4 Cohort Members

Below you can find a description and statement from each of the operators joining our Ethereum set (listed in alphabetical order).

		Attestant is a company dedicated to the business of staking. It provides a non-custodial Ethereum staking service, giving customers the ability to stake their Ether using Attestant’s institutional-grade infrastructure, which provides the highest level of resilience. This is achieved by an infrastructure containing bare metal servers running in multiple geographical regions with the use of different consensus clients. We believe Ethereum is the future of decentralized finance, and for it to succeed as a serious competitor to fiat-based economies it will need secure and reliable partners that provide a range of services to support the ecosystem. To that end we are very excited to join the Lido Ethereum node operator set.
		ChainSafe is a leading blockchain R&D firm specializing in infrastructure solutions for the decentralized web. Alongside client implementations for Ethereum, Polkadot, Mina, and Filecoin, we’re building a portfolio of web3 products—Files, Storage, the Gaming SDK, and ChainBridge. As part of our mission to build better tooling for developers, ChainSafe embodies an open source and community-oriented ethos. The Lodestar team is excited to join Lido's Node Operator Wave 4 cohort. Lido is a significant player in the Ethereum ecosystem, and we look forward to working together on common goals, such as supporting client diversity and further decentralizing and securing the existing node operator pool.
		CryptoManufaktur is a node operator for Chainlink as well as a node operator for liquid staking providers such as Lido, Stakewise and RocketPool. We are active in the Ethereum community and care deeply about decentralization.
		Kukis Global is a Web3.0 infrastructure and service provider. We’ve offered secure and reliable non-custodial validator services since 2018 and provide accurate data for Chainlink and The Graph. We are using a dedicated geographically distributed infrastructure to ensure we can offer the best services. We are very excited to join the Lido node operator set, and we are looking forward to contributing more to the Lido ecosystem.
		Nethermind is a team of world-class builders and researchers. Our work touches many parts of the industry - from our Nethermind node to fundamental cryptography research and application-layer protocol development. We have years of experience building reliable infrastructure, with the likes of Gnosis Chain JSON RPC running solely on Nethermind nodes. At Nethermind, we believe the ecosystem's health comes above all else, and we know that Lido shares in this belief. We are incredibly excited to partner with Lido to contribute to the security and robustness of the ecosystem.
		Prysmatic Labs is an Ethereum core development team that maintains the popular Prysm implementation for Ethereum proof-of-stake. Our team has been at the forefront of staking R&D and has instrumented some of the first public testnets for running Ethereum validators. Today, we are domain experts in running our software at scale and continuously improving the quality of our product for individuals and institutions alike. Our team is thrilled to join as a Lido operator because we believe core developers working on the staking protocol itself should have a seat at the table when it comes to also running validators at scale. We believe incentives should align between developers and the success of Ethereum staking as a whole. We will bring professionalism and deep knowledge of the protocol to the Lido community.
		RockLogic GmbH is based in Austria with a focus on the Ethereum ecosystem since 2019 which led to the open source Ethereum node setup Stereum. RockLogic commits to the development of software in the Ethereum space and uses decade long experience running server infrastructure for customers of various industries to benefit not only Lido, but also the Ethereum ecosystem.
		Sigma Prime provides top-tier security services to the Ethereum space and maintains Lighthouse, an Ethereum staking client that has been in production since genesis. Through Lighthouse we have gained a world-class understanding of the Ethereum specification, how it is implemented and how to maintain large fleets of validators. We are excited to join Lido to help ensure a diverse and knowledgeable set of node operators that is committed to Ethereum's values of decentralization and egalitarianism. We are thankful for the opportunity to fund open-source development through Lido and look forward to learning how we can improve Lighthouse through our activities here.

Next Steps

Once the Aragon vote(s) for the registration of our new operators has passed, the operators will be a part of the mainnet set.