Additions to the Lido on Solana Node Operator Set - Wave 3
The DAO has approved 2 new Node Operators for the Lido on Solana operator set with mainnet onboarding currently underway.
During August and September of 2022, an onboarding round was held for the Lido on Solana protocol for the inclusion of additional Node Operators into the operator set.
This round differed from prior onboarding rounds; following the Solana Wave 2 evaluation, the Lido Node Operator Subgovernance Group (LNOSG) determined that a separate evaluation should be held to evaluate node operators interested in joining the Solana staking ecosystem with the help of Lido. The Solana Wave 3 round was essentially a pilot program to determine how feasible it is for Lido to bring net new operators into the Solana ecosystem.
This round demonstrates Lido’s continued commitment to its Operator Set Strategy, specifically improving the decentralization of the underlying protocols on which Lido operates, in this case by increasing the number of validating entities on the Solana blockchain.
Following the evaluation of 21 applications (of which 16 were eligible for inclusion) by the LNOSG, 2 operators were shortlisted and sent to the DAO for approval. Additionally, 1 operator was waitlisted, meaning they will be officially proposed to the DAO for onboarding in the event that either shortlisted Node Operator displays sustained poor performance over the coming months. The shortlist was finalized and approved via snapshot on September 16th 2022. More information about the application and evaluation process can be found on Lido's forum.
Both of the shortlisted operators have begun the mainnet onboarding process and will be active members of the Lido on Solana operator set in the coming days, with the Lido on Solana team overseeing the validator setup process.
Below you can find a description and statement for each of the operators joining our Solana Operator set (listed in alphabetical order).
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Strong believers in liquid staking but concerned by the over-reliance of blockchains and staking pools on cloud-based validators, H2O Nodes offers on-prem infrastructure in underrepresented countries to improve the diversity of node operator sets. With a combined 75 years of experience running on-prem infrastructure, we run a bare metal setup out of a data center with multiple 100 Gigabit Ethernet (GigE) connections, and are the only Solana validator to run out of this data center.
We look forward to working together with Lido to improve validator onboarding and monitoring, publishing enough information about our infrastructure to satisfy institutional stakers, and experimenting with new technologies like MEV and new clients. |
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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 use a dedicated geographically distributed infrastructure to ensure we can offer the best services.
We are very excited to join the Lido node operator set on Solana, and we are looking forward to contributing more to the Lido ecosystem. |
Future Onboardings
The Lido on Solana protocol will be undergoing a smart contract update in the coming months which potentially will allow Node Operators to migrate their existing public node into the Lido on Solana validator set if they so choose. Given this pending change, the next Solana onboarding round is likely to be held sometime in Q4 or Q1’23, depending on overall market conditions.