Validator Expectations
- Liveliness: as a Lido node operator, your two most important responsibilities are to keep your nodes running and to not get slashed.
- Ensure validator liveliness through monitoring and sufficient redundancy planning.
- While there is no requirement or legal obligation to repay stETH to Lido stakeholders in the event of slashing or extended downtime, in the past node operators have offered and the DAO has accepted, e.g. https://research.lido.fi/t/reimbursement-for-chorus-one-october-2021-downtime/1456.
- Lido Node Operators are expected to keep their Lido related validators and keys running on separate instances from other clients (customers) (i.e. not comingled). In rare cases exceptions may be made, but this should be clarified prior to onboarding.
- Key submission procedures: Multiple team members from each Lido Node Operator should be well versed in the process of key submission and validator management. Detailed instructions regarding the key submission process are available in the Lido Node Operator docs and Existing Operator Portal.
- Node Operators are expected to maintain their Lido related testnet nodes to prepare for the merge as well as any other testing activities conducted by the Lido operator set.
- The testnet process is focused around a) getting node operators online and familiar with the key submission process, b) to allow for testing and setup of any automation that may need to be set up for e.g. key generation, deployment, and submissions, and c) to prepare for the Goerli / Prater merge.
- Any updates to Execution or Consensus Layer clients or major changes to physical infrastructure (e.g. changing from cloud to on-premise) should be communicated to the NOM team ahead of time to discuss any potential concerns, expected downtime, and best practices, etc.
Operator Responsibilities
- Responsiveness: Node Operators are expected to respond in a timely manner to requests for information, whether it be updates regarding validator performance, quarterly metric submissions, or other ad hoc surveys and data requests.
- Work towards further diversification of clients, geography, and infrastructure, as per the Operator Set Strategy.
- Monitor relevant Lido Communication Channels to keep up to date with DAO discussions and Ethereum related developments.
- Lido Node Operators are important stakeholders to the DAO and active participation in governance is expected.
Policies affecting NOs
Apart from the above, there may be policies enacted by the DAO which Node Operators are expected to follow.
Currently, the policies in effect are:
Voluntary Participation Opportunities
- Because Execution Layer smart contracts can’t directly access data from the Beacon Chain, a third party oracle is required to ensure the amount of recognized stETH and ETH are always in sync, and accurately reflect rebasing of stETH for Lido stakeholders.
- The Oracle mechanism consists of a set of offchain daemons operated by independent parties responsible for observing & reporting the total balances of all Lido's validators & the smart contract, implementing quorum mechanics for those reports. That way, the Lido protocol doesn't depend on single entity properly calculating the balances & reporting those.
- The current Oracle set (the majority of whom are Lido Node Operators) can be found in Lido’s Aragon UI, and currently consists of:
- Node Operators interested in participating as a member of the Deposit Security Committee can find more information in the Deposit Security Committee manual. This committee is critical to ensuring the safety of deposits on the Beacon chain and addresses a potential exploit reported by the Lido bug bounty program. More detail about the vulnerability is available in a forum post here.
- Node Operators are encouraged to participate in the Lido DAO governance process through both voting (i.e. by using LDO) and/or by providing their input and thoughts in community discussions and working groups. Participating in votes is not required for NOs and NOs who choose not to have LDO are welcome to participate
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