Some additional thoughts from the Star process:
Direct RPL incentives — the current Star incentive model
This approach requires a six-month lock-up, with rewards distributed only after the lock period. The timeline is relatively long, and the yield is not particularly attractive. More importantly, this model is likely unsustainable — especially if the RPL price continues to decline, which creates significant budget pressure for the GMC.
From my personal perspective, I wouldn’t recommend continuing to use RPL as the primary incentive or revenue-sharing mechanism.
Exploring more sustainable incentive models
Looking at commission structures across major LST/LRT protocols:
- Lido: 90% to stakers, 10% to DAO / CSM: 90% to stakers, 3.5–6% to NOs
- EtherFi: 90% to stakers, 10% to DAO / Instant unstake: 0.3% to DAO
- Rocket Pool: 86% to stakers, 14% to NOs / 86% to stakers, 10% to NOs, 4% to RPL stakers
Using a portion of ETH staking rewards as incentives appears to be more sustainable in the long run. One possible path is for the GMC or pDAO to stake RPL and use the 4% RPL staking yield as incentives or shared revenue.
When this idea was discussed previously, @haloooloolo raised an important question around which nodes the RPL should be staked to. This likely implies the need for institution-operated nodes (which may increase node count), or alternatively identifying a trusted node set to stake RPL and direct the resulting 4% yield toward incentive sharing.
Another idea: supporting 2048 ETH staking nodes, where institutions directly stake 2048 ETH into nodes they operate themselves. The balance between rETH and ETH backing would need further discussion, and this would likely require protocol-level changes.
DeFi Vault
One alternative is to stake rETH into the RockSolid vault and use the additional yield as a revenue-sharing mechanism. However, from a security and risk perspective, this may be difficult for institutions to fully buy into.