Hello👋 friends, hello ssv.network! 3️⃣,2️⃣,1️⃣…The incentivized testnet is finally here🦸‍♂️! Join us for a live🔴 kick-off on our Community Call #6📞. We also have new Verified Operators👨‍🔧, AMA top picks☝, Goerli Bot news🤖, v.0.1.9 Node version👨‍💻, Turkey Channel(🇹🇷), and a brand new Website🧠! Whop Whop 🚗! Happy digesting😍.

The DAO has (almost) spoken, and the incentivized testnet is finally here. After an intense discussion🦜 with the community🙌, the voting🚦 reached the required quorum🤝 and will close today at 6 PM UTC⏳.

If you read📖 this, chances are you’re currently (yes, right now) listening to Community Call #6🔴, where we celebrate the go-live🎬 of the long-awaited incentivized testnet and answer🤔 all your questions❓ along with some exciting tech demos🤩. If you came late to the party🎉, just enjoy the recording🎥.

https://cdn.embedly.com/widgets/media.html?src=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fembed%2Fa78HbqfQTdU%3Ffeature%3Doembed&display_name=YouTube&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Da78HbqfQTdU&image=https%3A%2F%2Fi.ytimg.com%2Fvi%2Fa78HbqfQTdU%2Fhqdefault.jpg&key=a19fcc184b9711e1b4764040d3dc5c07&type=text%2Fhtml&schema=youtube

Our Reddit AMA 🔊 session (Jan 17) on the Incentivized Testnet was a great success💪, with top answers from the ssv.network community, the Ambassadors, and the Blox team😍. Check out my top 3 AMA picks down below👇.

👉 I know what you’re thinking💭: I don’t need answers; I need Goerli ETH! Unfortunately😭, due to abusive behavior, we completely closed ⛔ the Goerli Bot channel for everyone. Also, we don’t accept🤚 any other sources of Goerli, e.g., from ethStaker faucet. Going forward, the only way to participate is via our new bot. Existing validators👩‍🔧 are unaffected by this and stay eligible. We’ll make a big announcement📢 once the bot🤖 is available.

The incentivized testnet🧪 will tell us a lot about potential real-life economics💱 between Validators and Operators (aka fees💸), which will lead to great insights🔍. However, Alon Muroch has already put down a few thoughts on the future economic parameters🧠.

👊 To get the best out of the incentivized testnet🧪, our core devs👩‍💻 released version 0.1.9 of the SSV node software just in time, including major network fixes and node resource consumption optimization🚀. Operators, please 🆙-grade!

😲 “99.93% performance with 1k validators — the new version in testing is doing great.” — Yorick | cryptomanufaktur.io

Last but not least🏁, we reached another significant milestone🔥. With a huge shout-out📢 to the Marketing team, the new ssv.network Website went live last week. The website reflects the ssv.network’s fundamentals and journey towards decentralizing and democratizing⛲ ETH staking, highlights the structure of our open-source protocol👨‍💻, and contains information for those who want to be involved with the project and contribute in any capacity🎉🎉🎉🎉.

🚦 With the successful vote ✅ on the Network Growth Grant, we acknowledge the community contribution👐 thus far, allow everyone to participate in future🔮 marketing activities and reward💰 such contribution. If you want to learn👩‍🏫 more, refresh your mind🧠 by reading Eran Efrima’s post on Phase II of decentralized marketing.
To be continued…👉

📢 Speaking about successful votes🚦, the proposal to add Tim Beiko from the Ethereum Foundation, as the 7th signer for the DAO’s multi-sig wallet, has started and is open until the 24th of January📅 at 6 PM UTC⌚!

Another important❗ vote is the DAO Curated Node Registry for Verified Operators✔, which specifies how to become a verified operator✅ on the ssv.network. ValiDiter, and Ahbaay already took it from there and both published their application as a validated operator📃 on the forum.

Talking🙊 about operators👨‍🔧👩‍🔧, we have to welcome🙋‍♀️ a huge amount of new verified operators. @launchnodes, @bonsfi, @POSTHUMAN_DVS, @stakethat, @lux8net, @AuditOne, Appload, http://laine.co.za.
Wow😲, it’s great to have you all on board!👋
🎯 Here’s an exercise for everyone: Look up their performance on the ssv.network explorer. Do you like👍 what you see? If not, ping📍 them on their dedicated discord channels.

Another great addition➕ to the ssv.network ecosystem is Blockswap network, a provider for fixed income products on DeFi. Blockswap Network published a mysterious🔮 teaser on twitter, announcing an SSV integration, and more news coming soon. Can’t wait for it😍!

It’s also great to see how our existing partners, such as Stakewise, evolve on their journeys👩‍🚀. Congratz🎉 to StakeWise on their StakeWise Metro launch. Metro is a decentralized architecture that allows external node operators to host StakeWise validators, partake in staking & MEV rewards, and seamlessly follow the protocol to other chains. That’s one hell🔥 of a mission statement👩‍🚀!

🌍Finally, the World is not enough! Last week we featured some content from our Chinese(🇨🇳) community. This week we’re pleased to announce a dedicated Turkey channel discord(🇹🇷). Welcome everyone👋, wherever you are!🤩

❓ Top 3 AMA picks ❔

👉Full AMA Session here👈

1Are you building in validator protections that will allow the validator owner to change operators if one or more of their operators is offline or underperforming?

“Yes definitely, that should be available after contracts V2 are released. I’ve written about it in the path to mainnet blog post.”

2Will there be minimum rates of compensation for operators to prevent a race to the bottom by people slashing their fees to gain market share?

“It’s an open market approach similar to what we have today, operators need to make money so driving fees down also goes against them.We are working on a dynamic network fee that encourages decentralization but it’s very early stage still. https://hackmd.io/EfrtkB6hRUG9xH395s5pFg”

3I set up a few validators right after the holidays between the 1st — 5th of Jan. […] Why aren’t they included in the simulation data? Was it simply too late to be included?

“Depends on when they became active. We will release a newer simulation the coming weeks.”

Bonus: What will be the role of the SSV token […] when launched on mainnet and real ETH is being staked; would some of the staking rewards/MEV go to the operators in Eth or SSV?

“The SSV token, as I envision it, will have 3 roles.
1) Governance, 2) Fee token, 3) Staking token. We are still working on the best architecture for that, you can see some early designs here.”

👨‍👧‍👦 Community Asks

🤔 Panic! The incentivized testnet started, and I have no Goerli ETH. Am I too late for the party?

“There should be plenty of time to participate in the testnet, at most newly spun up validators next week might miss the first distribution [(out of five)]. There will be plenty of testnet action in future to participate in [including a second one with a much bigger reward pool].”
— h.m.23 | 0NEinfra

🤔 I have a general question about eligibility on the incentivized testnet. Where can I ask?

The team is currently collecting questions for the upcoming Eligibility FAQ. So make sure to submit yours too!

🚀 DAO Updates

✅ = Accepted 🟥 = Declined 🚦 = Currently Voting 📃 = Proposal
🌟= New 🆙 = Updated ⏳ = On Hold

✅ Network Growth Grants

🚦 Incentivized Testnet — Final draft

🚦 Forbole Joining as SSV DAO Partner Proposal

🚦 Adding Tim Beiko as a multisig signer

📃🌟 DAO verified Operator status request — ValiDiter

📃 POAP allocation and distribution

📃 Formal Verification of SSV Protocol

⏳ DAO curated node registry — ‘Verified Operators’ proposal

⏳ Fundamental Labs — DAO Partner Program

🔴 Videos & Podcasts

👨‍💻 Tools & Code

⚒️ Version update 0.1.9
👉 Major network fixes
👉 Node resource consumption optimization
Note: Operators should see a drop in the number of connected peers, down to around ~250 peers.

We need you 👈

Have you spotted 👓 interesting content around SSV and related topics, or did you create content yourself? Let me know and drop me a line at batfleck9383@gmail.com. Any feedback is welcome.

— Benv