Project
Name of Project
What is the work being proposed?
Rocket School is an educational course, platform and video series designed to hand-hold new Rocket Pool node operators through the process of setting up their node. It offers a complete, opinionated, decentralization-first series of videos on the subject of staking with Rocket Pool, starting with a few general information videos on Ethereum and Rocket Pool staking, and then going through every detail of preparing hardware and software for becoming a Rocket Pool node/minipool operator, and maintaining it after that point. The intent is to lower the barrier to becoming a Rocket Pool node operator.
Rocket School has previously received just under $20K in DAI from an EthStaker grant in 2022 and has previously received $19559 from the GMC to help progress the project. Now the project is nearing completion with all of the videos being fully produced. The project was initially released at ETHDenver in 2024 with the completion of its video series, however, ongoing maintenance costs left insufficient funds remaining to launch the feature complete project. Currently there are a few things still to be finalized, including the full-featured Rocket School website, lists of terminal commands under each video to copy/paste making following along easier for new users, and updating content so that it remains relevant. We also intend to set aside funds for future course and website maintenance so that Rocket School can continue to remain a valuable educational resource for the community.
Is there any related work this builds off of?
Yes, this grant would wrap up the initial version of therocketschool.xyz website and video series. The previous GMC application which was successful can be found here: September 1-9 2023 GMC Call for Grant Applications - Deadline is September 9 - #8 by arbora
Will the results of this project be entirely open source? If not, which parts will not be, why, and under what license will they be published?
Yes.
Benefits
How does this help people looking to stake ETH for rETH?
Rocket School is a key resource helping more people become node operators, increasing the capacity of Rocket Pool to stake ETH for rETH. However, there has been hesitation to share the website in its current incomplete state, despite the video series being completed. Ensuring that the website is fully featured and ready to be shared, along with keeping the educational series up to date and available to the public will assist in the long term adoption and decentralisation of Rocket Pool.
How does this help rETH holders?
It will hopefully help more people become node operators, increasing the number of Rocket Pool validators on Ethereum, and thus improving the long-tail odds that exceptionally high MEV blocks are found and shared in the Rocket Pool smoothing pool, marginally increasing rETH yield.
How does this help people looking to run a Rocket Pool node for the first time?
Lowering the barriers to running a Rocket Pool node is the entire point of Rocket School. We surmise that the current semi-chaotic state of documentation, with many options and many references to external instructions and sites, and in text-only form, is intimidating to prospective node operators, even if they otherwise have sufficient technical knowledge and the required funds. We believe that a comprehensive professional-quality video lesson series, with friendly, entertaining, opinionated educational content, helps to overcome some of these challenges and greatly improve the experience for many of the people looking to run a Rocket Pool node for the first time.
By “opinionated”, we mean that our course covers a single path to running a Rocket Pool node, rather than attempting to cover many different options at once. We have carefully chosen that path to be the easiest one that still meets high security and decentralization standards. Points in the process where a different choice could be made were called out, without further explanation. Key ecosystem diversity choices like which clients to run are still left up to the student.
How does this help people already running a Rocket Pool node?
Rocket School also includes several general-information videos on Ethereum and Rocket Pool staking, as well as several lessons on node maintenance. It’s entirely possible that some of this will be new information even to existing Rocket Pool node operators.
How does this help the Rocket Pool community?
This grant will allow Rocket School to continue to provide a high-quality website and further improve its user friendliness with more documentation on the website. From here, any new node operators can join the community after being on-boarded, already operating a Rocket Pool node/minipool. This also lowers the burden on the existing community to help onboard newcomers as well as reducing friction which may prevent prospective node operators from giving up and never fully joining the community.
How does this help RPL holders?
It will hopefully help more people become node operators, and if they don’t already hold RPL, they will buy some in the pursuit of extra yield. It should be noted that pumping the price of RPL is not one of the goals of Rocket School, but rather increasing the decentralization of Ethereum.
What other non-RPL protocols, DAOs, projects, or individuals, would stand to benefit from this grant?
EVMavericks’ ManeNet DAO is the entity which created and maintains Rocket School; the DAO (with its very limited treasury) would likely feel it necessary to fund the remainder of Rocket School work or to at least cover bare minimum maintenance costs if this grant were not to be received. Hence, the grant would benefit the ManeNet DAO by sparing it the need to use what would be a significant portion of its public-goods-focused treasury in that way.
Will the resulting project be open source?
Yes. The source code for the site, including links to the lesson videos on Youtube, is in Github and will be open for PRs. The videos will be available for use anywhere in the ecosystem.
Team
Who is doing the work?
A mix of members of the EVMavericks’ ManeNet DAO, and paid contractors. Following is a list of the DAO members currently and previously involved. (@ = Discord usernames):
Current contributors include:
- juxtanotherposition (@ juxta) (Project manager, command transcription, GitHub manager, QA, & testing)
- Tricky.eth (@ TrickyCrypto, u/tricky_troll) (content writing, site review, QA, and testing)
- @ .eyezick (Site build)
Previous contributors include:
- DoubtStarsAreFire/@ doubtstars (Project manager, scriptwriting)
- Arbora/Interweaver/@ protoplanetary (Grantwriting, general cat-herding, scriptwriting, and Github management)
- @ jtnichol (Video production)
- juxtanotherposition (@ juxta) (Node setup screen recording, scriptwriting, contractor interface)
- @ shfryn (Site design and quality assurance)
- @ .eyezick (Site build)
- @ ZombieBP#6973 (Grantwriting, scriptwriting)
Previous contributors may be consulted to assist with the remaining work.
What is the background of the person(s) doing the work? What experience do they have with such projects in the past?
The current project contributors bring a mixture of relevant skills. Juxta and Eyezick have both been working on Rocket School since its inception. Juxta was one of the presenters of the project at Rocket Pool’s Denver Liftoff event at EthDenver24, and has continued organizing, maintaining, and contributing to this project in the background since, seeing it through to finalization via this grant. Eyezick is front end developer and Github maintainer for the website & will help launch the final changes. Finally, TrickyCrypto is a long-time solo staker, Dapp tester, community leader/moderator in r/EthFinance and has consulting experience with Ethereum ecosystem grants.
What is the breakdown of the proposed work, in terms of milestones and/or deadlines?
- Content writing for the Rocket School Overview web page. – December 31st 2024
- Transcription of all CLI commands from the video series into the video descriptions for easy access and better UX for prospective node operators. – December 31st 2024
- Test and review the Rocket School website – December 31st 2024
- Update content on therocketschool.xyz website with changes – December 31st 2024
How is the work being tested? Is testing included in the schedule?
The minor website changes will be reviewed by the three current project contributors while any substantial content changes such as the update for the Rocket School website will be run past additional Rocket Pool community members for accuracy and to confirm functionality before being finalized.
How will the work be maintained after delivery?
The site is on Github, so we hope to solicit community PRs for any technical improvements that can be made. Over the last 8 months (since Denver Liftoff), critical updates and maintenance costs have exceeded initial expectations and we have factored this in to the funding requested in this grant which will include an estimated one year worth of bare-minimum maintenance costs. This funding is used to keep the website and video-related course content up to date so that it still functions as an accurate, easy to follow guide for prospective node operators. This funding will provide ManeNetDAO sufficient runway toward a sustainable funding solution for Rocket School, which may include other ecosystem grants for a longer term solution. The EVMavericks’ ManeNet DAO will retain responsibility for noticing the need for and implementing/contracting for these website updates and any potential video updates.
Payment and Verification
What is the acceptance criteria?
See the next item.
What is the proposed payment schedule for the grant? How much USD $ and over what period of time is the applicant requesting?
We would like to request a total $11K grant, with payment in two lump sums.
The first portion of $5,000 would be paid immediately upon grant approval. This $5,000 covers retroactive payment of maintenance work performed in 2024 ($2,000) and the reservation of $3,000 for ongoing maintenance costs which are projected to pay for maintenance of the Rocket School project for the next year.
The second portion of the money would see $6,000 being released upon completion of the Rocket School website with the overview page, CLI command transcriptions under videos, and other minor fixes and content changes of the website.
Note that lesser grant amounts than $11k would also be very helpful, but we feel that this is the amount required to ensure that bare-minimum maintenance can be performed to keep the resource up to date and available to the public, as well as retroactive funding for unpaid project work from the Denver Liftoff event to the present. We are also open to discussions for a more long term funding solution to ensure the longevity of Rocket School as a core community resource.
These funds would be managed by the Rocket School multisig, which currently is a two-of-four multisig consisting of four respected EthFinance/EVMavericks/EthStaker community members (Interweaver, The-A-Word, ZombieBP, and Austonst). If there are any concerns about the makeup or size of this multisig, we are open to expanding or revising it.
How will the GMC verify that the work delivered matches the proposed cadence?
The proposed payment plan does not feature a specified cadence of work; the first portion of the grant will be used to fund already completed maintenance on the project as well as approximately 1 year of future maintenance work. The second portion of the grant would be paid upon the completion of the Rocket School website and its resources, primarily the Overview page and CLI commands underneath the videos.
What alternatives or options have been considered in order to save costs for the proposed project?
With maintenance costs and updating course content being the primary source of expenses for Rocket School, the clearest way to save on costs would be to either reduce the quality of any updates to course content or to cease any future updates beyond any volunteer contributions. However, this would largely represent a diminishing of our vision of Rocket School as a professional-quality source of information for new node operators.
Conflict of Interest
Does the person or persons proposing the grant have any conflicts of interest to disclose? (Please disclose here if you are a member of the GMC or if any member of the GMC would benefit directly financially from the grant).
A former project contributor @ShfRyn is on the Grants and Bounties Management Committee. He was compensated for his work on the site’s design. He has also been doing QA for us on a volunteer basis. At this time, we don’t have further paid work planned for him, so he would not benefit financially from this grant.
Will the recipient of the grant, or any protocol or project in which the recipient has a vested interest (other than Rocket Pool), benefit financially if the grant is successful?
EVMavericks’ ManeNet DAO will not benefit financially from this grant, except in the sense that it would no longer need to consider funding the ongoing maintenance of Rocket School itself.