Rocket Pool, the third largest Ethereum liquid staking protocol by Trade Value Locked (TVL), has entered into an agreement with Coinbase Ventures. An announcement on Rocket Pool’s Discord channel states that Coinbase Ventures has joined the Rocket Pool Oracle DAO (oDAO).
Rocket Pool is managed by two autonomous decentralized organizations (DAOs), with the oDAO in charge of running the protocol. Members of oDAO are rewarded with the RPL utility and governance token in exchange for staking and voting on the latest Rocket Pool smart contracts.
Partnership Aimed at Boosting Rocket Pool
Experts think that the new partnership could help Rocket Pool gain a competitive edge over the market leader in ETH liquid staking, Lido. According to DeFi Llama, Lido currently holds 4.88 million ETH tokens staked through its platform, in comparison to only 360K wagered through Rocket Pool.
Coinbase Ventures, the venture capital arm of the largest American crypto exchange, Coinbase, currently holds 1.042 million ETH tokens in liquid staking. Analysts consider this partnership to be a great opportunity for Rocket Pool to eventually overtake the popular ETH liquid staking service Lido. “Coinbase is a household name and having their engineers secure the data gives some institutions legitimacy to the protocol,” says Rocket Pool advocate for pseudonymous communities Jasper. “Also, the whole ecosystem is getting a boost,” he adds.
It is important to note that DeFi Llama claims that DeFi has a more diverse user base. However, Lido still offers a more attractive ETH staking return of 5.0% compared to Rocket Pool’s 4.43%. Unless Rocket Pool can bridge this gap in performance, it may prove difficult for them to close the TVL gap.
Crypto investors with a more pragmatic view of decentralization may not find this to be a major issue. Many in the crypto community consider Rocket Pool to be the most decentralized provider of ETH liquid staking services, due to its decentralized governance structure.
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