Saturn 2¶

Status: Draft

This design document is under active development.

Overview¶

Saturn 2 is the next major Rocket Pool protocol upgrade. It builds on Saturn 1 with a set of RPIPs that improve rETH competitiveness and liquidity, harden the protocol against underperforming and abandoned validators, and continue the migration toward fully on-chain pDAO governance.

Protocol-triggered exits¶

With the adoption of EIP-7002, Rocket Pool gains the ability to trigger validator exits from the execution layer without requiring the validator's signing key. These RPIPs define the exit capabilities and their shared plumbing.

RPIP-44 — Integrating execution layer triggerable exits — operator self-exit through the megapool contract (including when signing keys are lost) and permissionless forced exit once a megapool's deficit crosses the exit_deficit threshold.
RPIP-71 — rETH withdrawal liquidity via EIP-7002 — pool stakers redeem rETH at the protocol rate through a withdrawal queue, with the protocol automatically exiting validators (minipools first, then megapools via a tournament) when deposit-pool liquidity falls short.
RPIP-73 — rETH protection from underperforming nodes — a permissionless, optimistic on-chain challenge mechanism to eject significantly underperforming or abandoned validators, backed by a high economic bond to deter griefing.
RPIP-80 — Exit requests, triggering exits, and minipool penalties — the common plumbing beneath the other exit RPIPs: how an exit is requested, signalled, enforced, and accounted for uniformly across legacy minipools and megapools.

Optimisations¶

RPIP-79 — Faster withdrawal credentials check — replaces the mandatory beacon state proof on megapool creation with an optimistic challenge, letting the 31 ETH stake proceed without waiting on the beacon entry queue.

Economics¶

RPIP-46 & RPIP-81 — RPL issuance and inflation changes — of RPIP-46, only the RPL issuance reward and inflation changes take effect in Saturn 2: RPL issuance rewards to node operators are removed (0%), with the pDAO receiving 95% and the oDAO 5%. RPIP-81 overrides RPIP-46's inflation target, setting post-Saturn 2 RPL inflation to 2.5% per year (instead of RPIP-46's 1.5%). (Story page to come.)
RPIP-83 — Increase megapool bond requirements — raises the per-validator megapool bond to 6 ETH (base_bond_array = [6, 12], reduced_bond = 6) and uses megapool rewards to replenish underbonded validators back onto the bond curve.

Governance and pDAO¶

A group of proposals continues the move toward fully on-chain, self-governing pDAO operations. RPIP numbers are still to be assigned.

RPIP-82 — Enable pDAO spending of ETH and ERC-20 — lets the pDAO disburse treasury assets directly via on-chain voting, through one-time spends and recurring payment contracts.
pDAO parameters and guardrails overview — documents the adjustable parameters and the guardrails that bound them. (Story page to come.)
On-chain pDAO voting — migrates pDAO voting from Snapshot to an on-chain system. (Story page to come.)