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Staking Operator Documentation RFP

The Ethereum Foundation (EF) is seeking proposals from technical experts to create better documentation for staking operators. Technical documentation is needed to help up-skill existing operators from hobbyists, and smaller staking operators to a professional level.

This documentation should focus on high-level guidance rather than step-by-step instructions to ensure that operators continue to function with a diversity of setup. The aim of this documentation is to increase the number of professional staking operators available to the Ethereum community to complement and expand various staking protocols.

Problem statement

High level

The diversity of staking operators is critical to Ethereum aiding in both decentralisation and security.

Today, there are roughly only 60 - 100 staking operators capable of running staking operations at scale.

A number of new pools and staking groups are emerging in this space, but there is a lack of resources to give a high level overview of the different options available in running staking operations.

Requirements

The technical staking operator documentation should include (not exhaustive):

  • Monitoring
  • Updates and Releases
  • On-Call/Incidence response
  • Resource scaling
  • Migration
  • Availability/Uptime
  • Key management
  • Security

There are a number of ways to approach these topics and the documentation should give high level view on how to think about and approach the various problems with the tools and techniques available rather than a specific step-by-step guide.

A successful applicant should have technical knowledge in Ethereum staking operations and securing production systems.

RFP Details

As noted above, the EF is looking to accept only one proposal from an independent consultant or small team with strong technical knowledge in staking operations and securing production systems.

Process summary

The entire process can be summarized as follows:

  1. Request: EF releases RFP (this post)
  2. Gather: Consultants submit proposals
  3. Deliberate: EF analyzes proposals, discusses dynamically any suggestions in structure, direction, fee schedule, and/or timeline, and comes up with a plan based on the resources and needs of the accepted proposal(s).
  4. Propose: EF proposes a final structure of the proposal based upon deliberations/discussions.
  5. Begin: Team accepts and work begins

Engagement timeline

The EF proposes projects be structured as a two to four-month engagement with milestones/check-ins throughout.

Initial proposals will not be accepted for longer than four-month engagements. Subsequent proposals and grants can be formulated for follow-up work in the event this engagement goes well and a continuation is warranted.

Deliverables

The consultant is expected to refine their deliverables as a part of scoping the project. Deliverables can include but are not limited to -- website/wikis, blog posts, technical graphs/diagrams, instructional videos, etc.

EF can facilitate feedback from staking operators after the initial draft.

Bidding instructions

Upon reception of this request, interested consultants are expected to confirm receipt and intention to submit a proposal.

In this confirmation, Teams should explain what they need from the EF in order to get started. The EF is happy to help get you up to speed via sharing additional resources and/or answering direct questions.

Proposals must be submitted by 8th July 2022.

Please send initial confirmations, and proposals (in PDF format) to the following address: rfp@ethereum.org

Feel free to send us any questions you may have: rfp@ethereum.org