Classifying Ethereum's staking layer
London Nov. 29th, 2022 – Today, we’re thrilled to announce the launch of “tags” and a dedicated section for Node Operators on the Rated explorer.
What is decentralization? How much is enough? And how much too little? These are questions that often the subject of passionate debate in the Ethereum community. While there is no one right answer, getting closer to whatever an answer might be, is largely predicated on semantics; is a staking pool one entity or really the sum of its parts? Should we be measuring concentration of stake on the custody layer, or the operation layer? Who actually owns a validator; the operator, the custodian or the primary ETH holder?
Over the past few weeks we’ve been refactoring our database to reflect the various layers of Ethereum’s infrastructure set more accurately. As of today, the first piece of the new sidebar is coming alive, as we are introducing a new class of agent in the Rated Network Explorer; the Node Operator.
From today onwards, Pools (broadly defined as the custody/asset layer of staking) have their own dedicated space on the Rated Network Explorer, wholly distinct from Node Operators (NOs).
To help navigate the new architecture, as well as the chart through the overlapping layers of asset custody, ownership and validator operation, we’ve introduced “tags” to the mix. Tags demarcate the class of agent in question (e.g. pool vs operator), drive a clear distinction between different parts of a NOs fleet as deployed across different pools, and add some depth on the type of entity in focus (e.g. exchange vs custodian).
We hope our most recent release can be a helpful springboard for the best possible semantic definitions and eventually understanding of Ethereum’s base layer.
Besides that though, what is really exciting about this new release, is that it paves the way for one of the most frequently requested features on Rated to date; adding support for NOs to list their validator fleets under a dedicated Node Operator profile on the Rated Network Explorer!
If you would like us to add support for your validator fleet on the Rated explorer, we’d love to hear from you 👉 here.
About Rated
Rated was founded in 2022, by Elias Simos and Aris Koliopoulos. Elias was previously a Protocol Specialist at Coinbase (via the Bison Trails acquisition), while Aris spent the last 5 years building out social media and content platforms for tens of millions of users at Drivetribe.
