TL;DR: I propose a permanent “Rescue Node Service” for Rocket Pool users to fall back upon during pruning, (re)syncing or while fixing technical issues in general. I believe the advantage would greatly outweigh the community’s cost.
Some background:
Until recently, I was running Besu/Nimbus on my home Raspberry Pi-setup. Post-merge, this was disastrous - resulting in almost exclusively missed attestations for days straight. People with similar setups (but also high-powered systems) were also suffering from this.
Luckily I was able to fall back on Poupas’ “Rescue Node” (paid by himself?), along with many other NO’s, while waiting for a Besu fix. Three weeks later, the situation is still troublesome and I’m switching back to Geth, while continuing to fall back on the rescue node.
This led me to the idea that such a setup could prove to be a very valuable community asset:
it would be available for large-scale or individual technical issues, but could also serve as a temporary fallback during pruning/resync for NO’s that don’t have a fallback setup.
Ideally, this setup would be funded by the community. I think the overall return of otherwise missed attestations & proposals would definitely cover the cost. Additionally, it might even convince new NO’s (profile: home-staker without fallback HW) to join Rocketpool as they have an extra option to minimize downtime and increase returns.
Self-service URL’s and time constraint seem helpful.
Variations/requirements are possible: e.g. client combos, part of SP (or not), no incurred penalties, NO for X time, …
To consider - and where I hope the community can pitch in:
Potential security or central-party risks, possible malicious actions by the rescue node operator (steal your MEV/tips), disclaimer for the NO, …