The Lido Community Staking Tribes Initiative

Lido -

As part of the Lido Community Lifeguards Initiative, a new initiative has been launched to transform employees and contributors of Web3 organisations - whether companies or DAOs - into Ethereum solo stakers. This will be achieved by empowering them to run validators using the Lido Community Staking Module (CSM).

 

Drop, a cross-chain liquid staking protocol and Lido Alliance Member, will be the first organisation to participate in this initiative, with Dappnode as the staking hardware provider!

 

How does it work?

Through this initiative, participating Web3 organizations:

  1. Nominate contributors: Select at least four employees/contributors to take part in the program.
  2. Provide staking hardware: Furnish each of the participants with the necessary tools, such as custom co-branded Lido x Participating Organization staking hardware.
  3. Upskill employees/contributors: Participants will receive comprehensive training from the Lido Community Lifeguards, in collaboration with hardware providers, through workshops and ongoing support channels, enabling them to become proficient Ethereum solo stakers.
  4. Leverage co-marketing opportunities: Showcase the participating organisation’s commitment and contribution to enhancing Ethereum's decentralization through co-marketing campaigns.

 

Benefits for Participants

  1. Enhance community recognition of direct contributions to Ethereum security through collaborative marketing campaigns and tailored co-branded staking hardware providers.
  2. Upskilling participants. Because Proof of Stake rewards generated from Ethereum validators underpin a large part of the DeFi space, actually knowing “how the sausage is made” will provide employees and contributors better perspectives of the customers & communities they engage with.
  3. Tap into potential boosted staking rewards of the Lido Community Staking Module (CSM), a benefit for participants who adhere to the CSM rules.

 

 

Who is this for?

This initiative is perfect for:

  • Web3 organizations that directly benefit from increasing the number of solo stakers or plan to stake their ETH.
  • Ethereum-aligned teams who want to help kickstart a flywheel that introduce new solo stakers continuously to Ethereum - the very foundation upon which their businesses are built.
  • Organizations seeking innovative ways to upskill and incentivize contributors.

 

Fill in this form if you are interested to be part of the next cohort starting in Q1’25 and contributors acting as Lido Community Lifeguards will be in touch!

 

Motivations

1. Hardware cost is the greatest hurdle to solo staker adoption today

The two main sources of capital requirements for solo stakers are ETH capital and hardware costs, with cost of reliable suitably fast internet coming in at a close second.

 

Bonded validators reduce the minimum ETH capital requirements for solo staking and potentially increase staking reward rates. For instance, with CSM, Node Operators eligible for the Early Adoption program need to provide only 1.5 ETH as bond collateral to run their first validator - one of the lowest capital requirements in the marketplace. 

 

However, hardware costs remain a challenge for new independent operators, as they typically range from the equivalent of 0.2 to 0.5 ETH (based on the ETH price at the time of writing). This represents a 13% to 33% increase in capital requirements, measured in ETH, to spin up the first Ethereum validator with the minimum necessary resources. This means that the adoption of solo staking via bonded validators may only make sense for affluent individuals and largely exclude more diverse regions.

 

2. Hardware is not just hardware; it’s a gateway into the Ether

Once aspiring solo stakers get their hands on decent hardware however, many possibilities open up to them.

 

A single set of solo staking hardware is both vertically and horizontally scalable - capable of running hundreds of validator keys across various validator configurations such as Distributed Validators Technologies or DVTs (e.g., Obol and SSV) and Bonded Validators (e.g., Lido CSM).

 

This exposes solo stakers to more use cases and may make it more worthwhile than delegating their stake.

 

For this reason, getting solo staking hardware into the hands of aspiring stakers is considered the most impactful factor in fostering new solo stakers on Ethereum.

 

Inspirations

This initiative draws inspiration from #Teamstaking, a similar program led by Aragon and Dappnode earlier this year. 

 

By working with Web3 organisations, this initiative aims to address the final barriers to solo staking adoption for their employees or contributors, such as hardware costs. 

 

While hardware may seem expensive for individuals, it remains accessible to Web3 organizations seeking to upskill contributors and signal their Ethereum alignment.

 

Overall, the initiative is essentially a learning & development plus a co-marketing opportunity while actively contributing to the security of Ethereum where you are building.