Airdrop Ethereum Validators (Beacon Chain Contract Depositors)

100%, this is one of my main arguments for my position, I go into this on Ethereum Layer 2 Tokens — GLCstaked

I’m part of a few groups that focus on node operation, the type of market participant here are developers, network engineers, more technical people who don’t care much for trading.
Most are running ETH & Gnosis Chain, everyone is interested in running L2 nodes.

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100% agree. I can’t think of a class of users that is more aligned with the future of the Ethereum ecosystem than validators, as they locked their assets not knowing for how long.

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I agree with this. However, not sure if Staking services should receive the airdrop

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If exchanges, Lido, etc. get the airdrop, wouldn’t their staking customers demand their share of the airdrop? Unless the majority of their staked ETH does not belong to customers, idk.

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If the airdrop is the same for one validator vs 1000 validators, Lido will only get 21 airdrops for all the millions of ETH they stake. That’s basically ignorable for the end users

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Lido will only get 21 airdrops for all the millions of ETH they stake.

That sounds like a good outcome to be honest.

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Surely encouraging people to do this fits precisely with how the airdrop and Ethereum’s Phoenix are supposed to work. What better public good to incentivize for the ecosystem than getting more people to stake themselves (whether with a minipool or solo staking).

With that in mind maybe this would be better for an airdrop nearer to when withdrawals are enabled for validators on the Beacon Chain, with the plan to issue some rewards on the same basis in the future. That way people who are currently using CEXs/Lido to stake would see home stakers be rewarded and be able to withdraw their funds from centralized services, set up their own validator and expect a future airdrop for doing so as a way to overcome the friction of effort it entails.

EDIT - … but I don’t have any idea how many people with >16 or greater than >32 ether use centralized services and would therefore be targets for this.

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I think perhaps a good way to reward Ethereum validators would be to use that as a bonus criteria multiplier in a future airdrop?

So that we can determine that they are active on L2s and optimism in particular, then they can have an extra x amount of OP tokens?

Rather than make being a validator a single criteria as a lot of people view that as someone who’s extremely wealthy in crypto already and it would maybe hurt the narrative of Optimism?

Just a thought

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If the staking services such as Lido, Rocketpool etc commit to re-distribution among their depositors, we could let them receive the airdrop. That way, the 32ETH aesthetics problem flagged by @boodle is taken care of with also the smaller ETH2 stakers get their share.

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Let’s be honest: some beacon chain node operators weren’t altruistic in locking up their ETH… they we trying to get some of that 8%+ staking yield that was available early on. But given that the merge has been continuously delayed and yield rates have dropped significantly, many of them are probably feeling some “pain” at this point and would be grateful for an OP relief package :slight_smile:. And well deserving, considering they are providing the backbone to the PoS chain.

Running the numbers on how much OP would be available to each of the 371,030 validators: Genesis token count is 4,294,967,296 OP, of which 14% (601,295,421) is still available to airdrops. If we allocation 10% of that (60,129,542) to retroactive beacon chain validators, that’s only 162 OP tokens per validator. Granted, some of those would be excluded if they are part of staking pools, but even with 50% cut out, that’s still “only” 324 OP tokens per validator. Maybe that’s fine, but definitely some food for thought.

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only” 324 OP tokens per validator.

That’s about the amount you got from Airdrop 1 for having been ‘priced out of Ethereum’ or voted in DAO governance previously, so seems a reasonable order of magnitude.

It’s also worth bearing in mind that if the airdrop goes to nodes rather than validators (so you wouldn’t get 2x for running 2 validators on the same machine) then the number of recipients would be much lower, so much less of the airdroppable OP would be needed for this.

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Good point about the reduced number of recipients; if we count operators instead of validators that decreases the number of recipients significantly and bumps of the airdrop amount even more. I just wanted to get us talking about some specific numbers to validate that this even makes sense, and it appears there’s a road to do so.

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These numbers look reasonable. I would definitely vote for something like these, broader distribution is always healthy.

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I’ve been slow thinking about this for a few days and I’m not sure that I agree. People who liquid stake through a service like Lido or Rocketpool are not really in the same position as those who run the validators, precisely because they receive a liquid token (stETH or rETH) in return, whereas node operators are really locking away their assets, it’s much more of a long term commitment to the health of the chain. I’ve got some rETH, but if I decided to ditch Ethereum I could easily swap it for PonziCoin or whatever, it doesn’t demonstrate the same level of alignment as ether locked in a validator.

I’m probably willing to be convinced to change my mind on this, as there are definitely arguments that make sense for both sides and it is an interesting question.

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This is a great idea but I wouldn’t make it a multiplayer. Often a clean address is used for a node deposit, so it is unlikely that it would be used for anything else, including Optimism dapps.

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Most ETH2 validators are likely already eligible for the drop, imagine staking eth but not engaging with OP :man_mage:t2:

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To solve the Lido (etc.) issue we could simply airdrop to holders of stETH since this will be held by individual users who despited to Lido. We certainly should not exclude users of staking pools since they represent a large number of genuine users, who simply don’t have the resources to stake solo.

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If we are trying to retroactively reward people for locking up their ether, then what is the advantage to airdropping people holding a liquid staking token like stETH or rETH? How does that link to the concept that @GLCstaked is proposing?

Like I said, I’d be happy to be convinced otherwise on this, maybe I’m missing something obvious?

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I am following the original post which does not mention anything about locking up Ether. However, it is worth noting that deposited Eth on Lido is locked. You can trade stEth, of course, but you have locked up Eth.
I take it that the criteria is to be staking Ether. I can see no difference - from the perspective of an airdrop - between a user who solo stakes and a user who stakes using a pool. stEth is staked Eth on the Beacon chain, just from a different route. These users are securing the chain just as much as the solo stakers.
We should probably be aiming for drops that are inclusionary rather than exclusionary when the terms are about helping out. We’re not talking about sybil farmers here, but users who are invested enough in Ethereum to engage in staking, just without solo staking capability.

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I was going by these criteria from the original post, maybe ‘locking up ether’ is too imprecise a term.

An example that might illustrate my point is the difference between running a RocketPool minipool (which needs 16 ether) vs holding 16 ether worth of rETH. With the former your ether is committed long term to the security of the network. You cannot unstake and there is not even a date set when this will be possible. Your stake is a demonstration of long term alignment to Ethereum.

On the other hand, just holding rETH isn’t a long term commitment. At any time I can swap it for something else, if another chain looks like it might grow faster than Ethereum I can exchange my rETH today for a different token, I’m not tied to Ethereum in the same way.

I do appreciate the desire to be inclusionary, but in my opinion if the goal is to encourage certain behaviors that provide the largest benefit then by being less specific with rewards the effect is diluted.

What do you see as the advantage of airdropping to staking pool users? I think that’s maybe what I’m not understanding.

[Edit - spelling]

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